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I * • ^ 







THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE KEYS OF HEAVEN 
WEDDING RINGS FOR THREE 
MONTY’S GIRL 

LETTERS TO MY UNBORN SON 


THE 

CUCKOO’S NEST 


BY 


CHRISTINE JOPE.SLADE 

n 



/ 


BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1922 



4 



First Published in igsz 


^ I (P I I 
7 - 



C 


TO 

MY MOTHER 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

ZuRiEL Makes Her Mind Up 



PAGB 

I 

IL 

Secret Fires . 

• 


13 

III. 

Mrs. Whistler Makes Friends 


29 

IV. 

A Business Proposition . 



44 

V. 

In the Nest . 



55 

VI. 

ZuRiEL Stands Alone 



69 

VII. 

Life’s Philosophy . 



79 

VIII. 

An Order to View 



93 

IX. 

The New Branch . 



104 

X. 

Fine Feathers 



114 

XL 

Conventions . 



125 

XII. 

Breaking-Point 



134 

XIII. 

The Incense and the Idol 



142 

XIV. 

Bim Proposes . 



155 

XV. 

An Unexpected Arrival . 



161 

XVI. 

The Marchesa Sleeps 



170 

XVII. 

Ann Disposes . 



177 

XVIII. 

An Impersonal Subject . 

vii 

• 

• 

189 


CONTENTS 


viii 


CHAPTER PAGE 


XIX. 

Through a Glass Darkly 

o 

M 

XX. 

The Great Pink Dance 

00 

M 

XXI. 

Where the Moonlight Ended 

. 227 

XXII. 

The Marchesa Waits 

. 242 

XXIII. 

Lizzie Intervenes . 

. 256 

XXIV. 

Playing the Game . 

. 262 

XXV. 

Youth and Age 

. 277 

XXVI. 

Henry Sees it Through 

. 290 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


I 

ZURIEL MAKES HER MIND UP 

O N an ugly January afternoon a girl 
with silvery-gold hair and strange, 
big mouse-coloured eyes fringed 
with unbelievable lashes sat looking at the 
sea from the windows of a trim, pre- 
tentious little bungalow and ci^rsing in 
silence. Amazing words for a convent-bred 
maiden welled in her hectic imagination and 
broke like bubbles without relieving the 
tumultuous whirlpool of her passionate in- 
dignation against life and fate. 

Behind her, entrenched by a silver tea- 
tray, sat a little elderly woman ; everything 
about her was round, the shape of her fat 
limbs and her small fat features, even her 
tightly buttoned apprehensive mouth and 
her wide, childish apprehensive eyes. This 
rotundity found culmination in an enormous 

B 


2 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


circular Norwegian brooch fixed in the exact 
centre of her curved figure ; its hanging 
spangles of gold were the only visible 
moving things in the room. 

She also stared at the frothed edge of the 
sea, but a little apologetically and sadly, as 
if mentally defending it. Her thoughts, like 
her little body, grew in soft round curves, 
too ; she cradled her gentle ideas and hated 
to have them disturbed or replenished. 

“ I’m sure,” she said deprecatingly and 
nervously, “ this place is very nice, Zuriel, 
with Margate only just round the corner as 
you might say ; and the actress’s children 
that live down here in the summer ! Dozens 
of mornings I’ve taken up the Mirror or 
the Daily Sketch and seen them in just the 
same waterproof paddling drawers that I saw 
the nurse put on. It gives you a nice feeling 
when the house is your own and everything ; 
and we can always go to town for a matinde ; 
I’m sure that eleven o’clock does us beauti- 
fully.” 

“ What on earth has father gone to Cannes 
for. Mother ? ” 

Two fat, round tears gathered in Poppy 
Whistler’s round mouse-coloured eyes and 
rolled down her cheeks. 


ZURIEL MAKES HER MIND UP 3 

“ IVe been thinking about the way weVe 
been discussing father lately, Zuriel, and I 
feel dreadful, perfectly dreadful. Of course 
if you marry before youVe thirty you’re never 
quite loyal to your husband ; up till then 
you’ve always a close woman friend ; but I 
hadn’t one . . . so I’ve started discussing him 
now I’ve turned fifty and he’s bald and every- 
thing, and with his own daughter ! There’s 
something very dreadful about thinking 
things about a bald man, any bald man — ^it’s 
almost indecent.” 

The fire danced and crackled, Mrs. 
Whistler’s Norwegian brooch danced also 
and twinkled in its convulsive heavings ; the 
room with its rich rose du Barri carpet from 
Hamptons and its rich rose du Barri curtains 
from Maples grew richer and rosier, and the 
light outside greyer and thinner and colder 
in contrast ; the figure of the girl, her whole 
personality swayed by a restless agony of 
impatience and revolt, belonged neither to 
the cheer of the room nor the bleakness of 
the outer world ; she was transient, incidental 
to both. 

“ He’s a wonderful husband and a wonder- 
ful father. You should know some, Zuriel ! 
Married women talk, you should have heard 


4 


THE CUCKOOES NEST 


some of those poor things at the hotels . . . 
and even down here, though we don’t know 
a soul . . . well, no real woman wants to stop 
her charwoman talking some days, and you 
do learn, my goodness ! He’s so generous, 
look at the way you’ve been educated, the 
way we’ve gone abroad every year — always 
stalls, and every concert ; and the clothes 
. . . always the best.” 

“ That’s what I say, you’ve no right to 
equip people and not let them practise. I 
speak French and Italian, I’ve travelled, I 
think, I feel, I know, I want things . . . 
and here am I stuck down here forbidden to 
know people.” 

“ Not forbidden, Zuriel, . . . only he hasn’t 
wanted us to ; we’ve always had everything 
else except people.” 

The girl swung round, everywhere that 
the mother achieved sphericity this girl 
betrayed delicious, tiny-boned angularities ; 
there was something puck-like in the slim- 
ness of her little WTists and ankles, the tiny 
column of her neck ; her toes, her hands, 
her nose were absurdly, deliciously pointed, 
her hair hid wee pointed ears ; the fire 
flickered in her queer eyes, not brown, not 
grey, but like mole velvet. 


ZURIEL M^ES HER MIND UP 5 

“ Everything else except people ! ’’ she 
echoed. ‘‘ As if anything else mattered ever 
. . . except people ! All day long, if we’re 
normal, we’re thinking, dreaming, watching, 
reading about, wondering about . . . people, 
our relation to them and theirs to us, 
speculating, hoping. When you read books 
you skip out all the descriptions of scenery 
or atmosphere . . . you know you do . . . 
you can’t bother your mind about anything 
that isn’t people. Women can’t. They 
always want to mean something to some- 
one or someone to mean something to 
them. We’re father’s harem, that’s what we 
are ! ” 

A faint pink came into Poppy Whistler’s 
face. 

“ Daughters don’t remember that their 
fathers are their mothers’ husbands nowa- 
days,” she said ; ‘‘I know you think I’m 
soft never to have plagued your father to 
know what he was. When you’ve got every- 
thing it’s easy to get used to anything. He 
asked me to trust him. He said one day he’d 
be worthy of us.” 

‘‘ And you don’t wonder what he does 
coming down on the midnight train every 
night and going up at ten the next morning ; 


6 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


you don’t question his going to Cannes for 
six months ... it ... it’s medieval. ...” 

“If I went ferreting round, Zuriel, I 
might find something I didn’t want to.” 

“ I should think he’s a particularly lucky 
burglar or else he keeps a gambling- 
hell.” 

Mrs. Whistler rose to her feet. Against 
the glow of the fire her outlines were vague 
and billowy. There was real distress in her 
voice. 

“ I’ve told you before, I won’t have it. I 
wake at night and remember . . . and he 
doesn’t feel at all like a burglar. The other 
night he got up . . . gentle and good like he 
always is . . . and boiled me some milk on 
the electric stove and then refilled my hot- 
water bottle . . . and what woke me was 
wondering if he really was a forger. Can 
you think what I felt like ! ” 

The thin screech of seagulls filled in the 
silence. 

“ What do you want, Zuriel ? ” 

“ I want to live ! ” 

“ I believe if I’d called you Muriel it would 
have been all right ; you’d have liked the 
same things I like, going up to see the shops, 
and making jumpers.” 


ZURIEL MAKES HER MIND UP 7 

“ How much did father leave us ? 

“ Fifteen pounds a week. I could have 
had more if I’d asked.” 

“ It was a pity you didn’t ; we shall need 
it all.” 

“ I’ve told you, Zuriel . . . not that. I’m 
not cut out for deception . . . not my figure 
or anything.” 

The tea-service was black covered with 
little pink rose-buds ; Zuriel crossed to the 
table, cut herself an enormous slice of 
Fuller’s layer cake and resumed her seat. 
In the road outside a spinal carriage was 
trundled past, and a minute after another. 

“ You expect me to live with those ! ” 

I don’t expect you to live with them ; 
you don’t live with them, you only see them.” 
She got up agitatedly and stood in front of 
the fire waving one tiny foot in a strapped 
shoe that forced the instep up like a little 
round pincushion. “ If you’d been born in 
a nursing home. I’d never have believed you 
were our child,” she said, “ but there wasn’t 
another house for two miles, and besides 
you’ve my mother’s eyes. If you were 
romantic I could understand you better. 
It’s good for a girl to be romantic, it makes 
her go on putting up with things in married 


8 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


life till she’s used to them. I don’t know 
what you’ve told this Italian Marchesa of 
yours ; I don’t know what you started talk- 
ing to her for, you never do any good talking 
to anyone in a seaside shelter — regular bee- 
hives of symptoms and unreliable receipts 
and old crochet patterns they are. I’m not 
going to look after her house in London for 
her or anything, Zuriel ; I’m going to stay 
here at Birchington in this house and have 
Lizzie look after us until father comes back 
from Cannes. Go up to town and live in her 
house and pretend we are goodness knows 
what . . . why ! it would be a regular cuckoo’s 
nest.” 

“ Cuckoos don’t make nests.” 

“ That’s just what I mean . . . they push 
in anywhere and settle down in places 
they’re not entitled to . . . and that’s what 
you want me to do and I’m not going to do 
it. I can’t think why you don’t make some 
undies with that pink crepe de Chine we got 
at Bobby’s. After all, Zuriel, if you make 
things you do know what you’ve got, but if 
you sit over the fire reading novels all day 
you only know what you haven’t got. You 
aren’t like other girls.” 

“ Oh ! I am. Mother, that’s just it, dear. 


ZURIEL MAKES HER MIND UP 9 

I want the very things they want . . . only I 
want more ! I can’t stay rotting away my 
youth here just with you and father. If you 
loved me you wouldn’t want me to. This 
is our chance ! This is ! Even if nothing 
happens in the months we’re in town I shall 
have seen things and people . . . felt things 
and done things. Kisses and babies and 
hot toast in the winter aren’t going to be 
enough for me. It isn’t my fault. You 
must have had suppressed desires . . . and 
they’ve come out in me.” 

Mrs. Whistler flushed deeply. 

“ If it’s that Freud I found in your room 
you’re talking about, Zuriel, please don’t. 
I’m a broad-minded woman, but you’re not 
going to persuade me that if a good man 
with a family dreams of turnips or white 
mice it means he ought to go and have a good 
time. Religions telling people they ought 
to do what they want to are always popping 
up, but they aren’t popular with women, and 
you can’t make a religion go unless you’ve 
got the women.” 

The maid came in and drew the curtains, 
built up the Are and removed the tea-things ; 
mother and daughter were left in the glow of 
rose-shaded lamps. The mother sat down 


10 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


and drew a jade silk jersey out of a black 
satin bag, but her hands trembled. 

Zuriel said very quietly and steadily : 

‘‘ IVe made up my mind you know, 
Mother, Fm going to London. If you don’t 
come with me I shall go alone. Fm sick of 
this convent life. You needn’t ever tell 
father if you don’t want to. We shall be 
here when he comes back. Of course it will 
be a tremendous joke to the Marchesa. One 
can see that, but I can’t see that it matters 
being a joke to anyone if you get something 
out of it.” 

The mother lifted her head and looked at 
the girl, little and slim and pointed, with 
her queer, velvety, slanting faun’s eyes and 
her exquisite pale hair, silvery in the lamp- 
light ; and she said a little piteously : Oh ! 
Zuriel, what do you hope to get out of it ? ” 

The girl’s voice w^as very level. 

“ I don’t know quite. Mother. People 
will call . . . artistic people, interesting 
people. The Marchesa will say she is lend- 
ing her house to friends of hers. Of course 
I know quite well why she’s doing it ; life’s 
a sort of play to her, and she wants to see 
what I make of my big chance and she wants 
to give me my big chance. I strike her as 


ZURIEL MAKES HER MIND UP ii 

romantic, not knowing what my own father 
does for his living ; and then she’d never 
met anyone with fair hair and dark eyes ; 
she said so. She always lends her house to 
someone every year when she goes to Italy. 
I’ve got to write to her once a week and tell 
her v.^ho calls and what happens. It’s just 
a sort of romantic joke to her . . . foisting 
us on her friends, launching us and seeing 
where we land. She says I am wasted down 
here ; well, I am wasted. When father 
comes back life will go on just the same. I 
could break free — I could go up to town and 
be a governess or private secretary or go in 
a shop, but it only amounts to buying my 
own food and not such good food ; it doesn’t 
lead anywhere, it doesn’t teach me anything 
at all.” 

“You do have good food ; your father 
never would have anything but the very, 
very best from the very, very best places.” 

“ I know, but food doesn’t matter when 
you’re young — it’s people and clothes and 
feeling things that matter when you’re young, 
even nasty things. Oh ! it’s awful to go on 
waiting for something to happen ! ” 

“ But . . .” 

“Well, I haven’t had a fair life, have I, 


12 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

Mother ? Educated abroad and only allowed 
to stay with the foreigners. . . . What good 
has anything IVe ever had been to me yet } 
Did father pay a lump sum into the bank ? ’’ 

“ Yes.’’ 

“ Then we can draw it all out and take it 
to town ” — suddenly she flung herself on 
her knees. “ Please . . . please come and 
see the Marchesa ; she’ll explain so much 
better than I . . . you haven’t the right to 
hold me back when the door’s opened, and 
she’s holding open the door. We’ve only 
got to go through.” 


II 


SECRET FIRES 


I ! ” said the Marchesa di Schundo, 



“ the mother/’ She laughed and 


waved the manservant away. 
“ Come in,” she said. “ Come in. This is 
delightful. I was so unutterably bored.” 

She spoke without a trace of accent, her 
voice, her bronze wig, were young ; the rest 
of her seemed withdrawn from the world by 
the process of time, her twinkling brown eyes 
beneath her shaggy, penthouse brows, her 
teeth behind the thin sardonic line of her 
fallen mouth, her frail skinny hands beneath 
their absurd coruscation of gems , her shrunken 
body behind the stiff little pointed bodice, 
her very process of thought became a 
mystery behind the withered mask that time 
had made for her. Poppy Whistler faced this 
human conning-tower with embarrassment. 

“ Zuriel made me come,” she said, “ but 
I couldn’t do it — really and truly I couldn’t, 
Marchesa.” 


13 


14 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

The Marchesa said, “ There’s a fire in the 
library, Zuriel, and ‘ Vogue ’ and ‘ Harper’s 
Bazaar.’ Ring for anything you want.” 
Poppy Whistler had a queer feeling that the 
old lady was mentally settling in position to 
enjoy herself with the attitude of the country 
cousin who visits the theatre rarely and is 
prepared to absorb every second of it. 

“ Now tell me,” she said, “ I am utterly 
intrigued — don’t you want that beautiful 
girl of yours to know or don’t you really 
know yourself what your husband is ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Poppy Whistler. 

“ And you’ve never wondered ? ” 

“ If a woman’s decently treated she gets 
used to anything.” 

“ True,” she laid her hand on Poppy 
Whistler’s round arm ;'it was armoured in 
jewels, they blazed and twinkled in the 
light of the electric candles. “You and I 
are free women,” she said ; “ we can talk 
honestly.” 

“ Free ? ” stared Poppy, round-eyed. 

“We neither of us need things or people 
for ourselves,” said the Marchesa ; “ that 
is the only freedom a woman ever knows.” 

“ Good gracious ! ” said Poppy Whistler. 

The Marchesa smiled very faintly ; there 


SECRET FIRES 


15 


was something remote and sequestered in 
her smile. 

“ You and I understand each other/’ she 
suggested. 

“ I don’t know,” was Mrs. Whistler’s 
answer. 

“ If I had had a daughter like Zuriel I 
should have moved heaven and earth to 
achieve things for her.” 

“ I’ve heard dozens of women who weren’t 
mothers talk like you.” Mrs. Whistler was 
uncompromising. “ Childless women are 
nearly as ignorant as spinsters about children 
and more cocksure. I get so irritated. You 
want to lend us your house for nothing and 
you want us to go and live there. I can 
quite understand t^t you’ve taken a fancy 
to Zuriel ; you’ve seen a lot of her since that 
wet day you talked in the shelter. I can’t 
think myself what she wanted to tell you 
about everything for. I’m a candid sort of 
woman. I haven’t had the education to be 
otherwise. Father had a hardware store at 
Bishop’s Stortford. What I can’t see and I 
do want to know is, what you get out 
of it } ” 

She glanced round the room. In her heart 
she thought it was like a play, one of those 


i6 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


modern things she didn’t understand ; and 
there was something about the withered old 
witch, something impregnable and unread- 
able. She was like Genevieve Ward as an 
aristocrat ; one strained one’s mind up and 
was conscious of the strain only, not of 
understanding. The electric lights glim- 
mered on books one never read, pictures one 
never saw in shop windows. It was unreal, 
theatrical, a junk-shop of the past. She 
looked at the bulgy nymphs and goddesses 
in gold frames and felt vague discomfort at 
their creases and dimples. It was a good 
thing corsets had been invented since. 

“ I am seventy-six,” said the Marchesa ; 
“ I live in the gloaming.” 

“ There are a lot of wonderful old ladies 
about now,” said Mrs. Whistler vaguely. 

“ I believe in romance,” said the Marchesa, 
her voice was a little tired and sad. 

Poppy Whistler hastened to cheer her up. 
“I’m sure we all do. My charwoman told 
me of a maid who gave notice in December 
in case she wouldn’t get the day off to see 
Princess Mary married. I’d like to see 
Chesterfield House myself.” 

“ It is possibly much altered since I saw 
it,” said the Marchesa. 


SECRET FIRES 


17 

“ There ! ’’ exclaimed Mrs. Whistler, “ and 
me running on about charwomen ! she 
paused. ‘‘ Now about Zuriel ? ” 

“ I suppose you know she’s extra- 
ordinary ? ” 

“Well, you don’t think things like that 
about your own daughter, you can’t get far 
enough away if you know what I mean.” 

“ The life she’s living down here isn’t 
right for her, Mrs. Whistler ; it’s a cruel 
life for a young girl with desires and ambi- 
tions and such unusual distinction. Imagine 
twenty-two living in a lotus land where it is 
always afternoon.” 

“ As you put it,” said Mrs. Whistler, “ it 
doesn’t seem right, but I’ve always said it’s 
the hardest thing in the whole world for a 
mother to realise that lovely food and a 
sweet home and theatres and nice clothes 
aren’t all her daughter wants . . . and that’s 
because it’s all she wants her to want, 
because she knows she can’t supply the 
rest.” 

“ You’re a shrewd woman.” 

“ I’ve common sense,” said Poppy 
Whistler, “ and how the young do hate it ! ” 
The tears came into her round, velvety eyes. 
“ Of course I know her dad’s peculiar and 


i8 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

the situation is peculiar, but the situations 
you’re in yourself never seem half as funny 
to you as they do to other people. It didn’t 
really seem odd to me not knowing what 
Henry was until Zuriel left school and 
started to find it odd.” 

“ Didn’t you question him ? ” 

“ I did, but somehow . . . he’s one of 
those lofty little men — they’re very hard to 
question, you know. He’s very gentle and 
noble and very clean. I never saw such 
tremendous half-moons as he’s got, keeps 
his hands like a dentist’s. There’s some- 
thing about a man like that . . . well, after 
all, unless we’re clever, and I’m not, it’s 
men’s messy, tiresome little ways that put 
us on an equality with them.” 

‘‘ Artists will want to paint your daughter, 
Mrs. Whistler.” 

“ I wanted to send her picture to the 
Daily Mirror beauty competition. It’s the 
only time I’ve ever seen my husband what 
you might call really put out, but he went 
and bought me this afterwards, brought it 
back from town ” — she held out her fat 
little sausage finger on which gleamed a 
diamond ring. “ It’s funny the way men 
give you presents to commemorate the nasty 


SECRET FIRES 


19 


things they say ; I never could understand 
it ; a woman always swears she never said 
them.” 

“ Your daughter can’t have a future down 
at Birchington, can she, Mrs. Whistler ? ” 

“ What sort of future do you think she’ll 
have in London, Marchesa ? ” 

“ With her hair and eyes ! ” 

“ The streets are full of girls with hair 
and eyes, Marchesa.” 

“ Oh ! can’t you see your daughter ! ! ” 

“ Not like you do, Marchesa ; when you’ve 
nursed them and spanked them and stuffed 
them with paregoric and looked for measles, 
you don’t.” 

The Marchesa suddenly gripped the arms 
of her chair with her jewelled talons. She 
was like some weird, emaciated little bird 
brooding over the little round-eyed, level- 
headed mother. Her shoulders came level 
with her ears, her neck craned forward, 
sinewy as an old plucked fowl. 

“ She might make a grand marriage, she 
might make a romantic marriage,” she said. 
“ She will probably make the only sort of 
marriage she has use for ... a marriage that 
is a going on, not a settling down. She has 
immense capacity. She is an opportunist. 


20 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


I offer you a charming little house, a unique 
setting, an unquestioned entry into Bohemian, 
pseudo-smart society, all that is fashionable. 
You ask me what I hope to get from it } It 
is a little difficult to say, even to such a woman 
of common sense ; the aged warm themselves 
at secret fires, Mrs. Whistler ; I warm myself 
at the fires of romance. I have a tiresome 
sense of humour ; one can share a religion 
or a hatred but never a sense of humour ; 
they are all different ; it is an infinitely lonely 
possession. Zuriel has promised to write to 
me in Italy, to tell me faithfully how things 
and people strike her. I want to see my world 
mirrored in a virgin mind. I offer her the 
chance of a career, a husband, a future of her 
own choosing in return for a few letters, a 
peep behind the curtains. Is it so very un- 
understandable } ” 

“ Well, I shouldn’t do it myself, Marchesa,’’ 
Poppy Whistler ceded frankly, “ but then 
I’ve always had my little independent amuse- 
ments, crocheting and knitting and Patience, 
and thankful I am for them.” 

‘‘ I believe with my whole soul that the 
world is for the young.” 

“ They believe it too nowadays, right up 
from the Kindergarten. Of course it isn’t 


SECRET FIRES 


21 


difficult, I could put Lizzie on board wages 
at her aunt’s ; she lives within a stone’s throw 
of where the Margate trains stop, and she 
could go in every day and give the bungalow 
a tidy up and send the letters on . . . it’s 
Henry that worries me.” 

“ Doesn’t he love his daughter ? ” 

Poppy Whistler’s round, honest eyes 
flickered over the room as if seeking actuali- 
ties ; they travelled from golden mirrors to 
golden chairs ; worried, they rested on the 
colourful fantasy of priceless china ; per- 
plexed they fell on a tortoiseshell cat on a 
green and brown tapestry chair and cleared 
a little ; here was something homely, some- 
thing akin to her in this harlequin world in 
which she found no mental anchorage. 

“ He thinks the world of us both,” she 
said, “ Zuriel might be a princess and I his 
queen. Yes, I know, a funny old bunch like 
me, figure spread and everything — I can’t 
get a pair of corsets in England to do it now, 
it’s beyond them,” she marshalled her w^ords 
with difficulty, fumbling in her mind for 
them, stringing them together carefully that 
she might make that thing that lived mysteri- 
ously and hidden behind those twinkling 
brown eyes understand. ‘‘ It’s as if he’s 


22 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


always been building for us . . . keeping us 
shut away till the thing’s conipleted and 
worthy of us ; that’s the feeling I have with 
him sometimes. To him we’re holy. He’s 
a very possessive man, always has been — 
it’s my God, my King, my country and my 
wife. I like it, it gives a woman a gripped 
feeling. He’s very, very generous, doesn’t 
question what we do or how we spend, 
but I know he’s saved . . . for something. 
He’s a very definite kind of man. He’s 
got a secret surprise for us I feel sure . . . 
shall we be upsetting his plans if we go to 
London ? ” 

“ If you don’t know them you can’t upset 
them.” 

“ You can feel things you don’t know 
about your husband when you’ve been 
married twenty-four years.” 

“ It’s nice to be only able to feel things 
about your husband after twenty-four years,” 
submitted the Marchesa ironically. “ I knew 
them about mine.” 

“ I think everyone tries to be a good 
mother,” said Mrs. Whistler a little un- 
steadily, “ I do honestly, Marchesa. I do 
see things as you and Zuriel see them. I 
see she wouldn’t have a chance down here. 


SECRET FIRES 


23 


and, as she says, father’s never been away 
before and he may never go away again . . . 
and when he comes back it’ll be the same 
old comfortable way we’ve always lived ; 
and if Zuriel breaks away from it she’ll break 
alone. I couldn’t leave Henry ; besides, I 
love the life, it suits me,” she sighed a little. 
“ Perhaps a glimpse of life will satisfy her, 
perhaps she won’t like it,” she did not look 
at the old woman, she looked stubbornly 
away and ranged her jerry-built hopes. “ I 
shall have to tell Henry. You get used to 
telling them things after twenty-four years. 
I can’t run the risk of writing and having it 
forbidden with Zuriel worked up like she is. 
I do think it’s such rubbish to write of the 
man, the woman and child as the happy 
trinity. It always annoys me. For the 
mother it’s a continual which — will — ^you — 
have ? I’ve found it so. Of course I know 
we could never hope to get into the society 
we’re going into. I don’t want to wipe out 
that hardware store at Bishop’s Stortford. 
Suppose she find someone in London who’s 
well connected . . . well, there’s her father 
. . . who knows ? ” 

The Marchesa’s eyes sparkled a little. 

“ It is impossible not to be intrigued,” 


24 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


she murmured. “ For myself a living novel 
unfolds ... a play produces itself.” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Whistler hesitatingly. 
“ I see your side of it.” 

“ You climb on the knees of the gods } ” 

“ Well, I wouldn’t put it like that and I 
wouldn’t do it if I saw any way out,” she 
paused. “ Of course we could shut up the 
bungalow and go to town and stay at the 
Regent Palace Hotel and go about a bit . . . 
but it would be only me and Zuriel, just as 
it has been before always ; it wouldn’t lead 
anywhere. If I could only see Henry.” 
She clasped her little fat hands. “ But 
there — he’d only refuse point-blank and 
Zuriel would go away ... we wouldn’t keep 
her. She’s over twenty-one. She’s in 
revolt. I’ve had maids like it and they’ve 
always gone no matter what you say or do 
or promise ... I know it. I’ve had to cope. 
I’ve had an easy life up till now.” 

“ And now you are going to have an excit- 
ing one. You take the loan of my house too 
seriously. I lend it every year. I hate 
caretakers. It’s a tiny, tall place, only four 
bedrooms, a lounge that runs the entire 
length of the house, and there is a studio in 
the garden. My husband was a sculptor. 


SECRET FIRES 


25 


When we quarrelled he lived out there. He 
had it built so that he could quarrel more ; 
he did enjoy it so. There is a tiny bedroom 
and kitchenette. It is lent.” 

“ Lent ? ” 

“ To a brother and sister. She teaches 
rhythmic dancing. He is a painter. He 
designs the most adorable frocks. He’ll 
want to design for Zuriel. He whistles like 
a blackbird, too.” 

Poppy Whistler looked at the Marchesa. 
She was very, very tired. Her brown eyes 
were like little unpolished brown stones 
beneath the protective eaves of her eyelids 
and brows. She was withdrawing slowly, 
like a tortoise into his shell, into the im- 
pregnable mask that time had made fordier. 

‘‘ Zuriel ...” she began. 

The door opened gently and Zuriel peeped 
round the corner. She came in, closed it 
softly, and stood gripping the heavy glass 
handle with her hands behind her. 

‘‘ I waited and waited,” she faltered, “ it 
seemed like years.” 

She looked from the Marchesa to her 
mother, the eager, swift glances of a young 
imprisoned thing. With her hands behind 
her gripped on the glass door handle she 


26 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


looked bound, she swayed a little in an agony 
of apprehension. 

‘‘ Marchesa ! ” she said. 

The old woman’s eyes were tightly closed, 
her over-jewelled claws hung loosely over the 
ends of her curved arm-chair ; she looked 
like some grotesque idol, yet behind her 
closed eyes she seemed to watch. 

“ Mother ! ” 

Mrs. Whistler saw her as a little captive 
bird, pinioned for strange flights, suddenly 
alien to her, suddenly unknown. She had 
a sudden vision of her soaring up in ways 
unknown, through ways unknown, and herself 
watching, helpless and heavy and old and in 
her loving heart secretly uncomprehending. 

That moment of always unexpected lone- 
liness that comes to all mothers came to her. 
It closed over her mind like a little black 
velvet bag. Her familiar commonplace 
mental machinery rocked and crashed in it 
frighteningly, unfamiliar as a machine-room 
in a factory where the light has momentarily 
failed. She struggled for known handles 
and levers. 

She had a queer feeling that behind her 
closed lids the Marchesa knew all that was 
passing, that her impassivity was registering 


SECRET FIRES ' 


27 


the emotions in that room as invisibly and 
surely as a photographic plate. 

“ It’s all right, Zuriel,” she said. We 
are going.” 

Zuriel’s hands flew from the door handle, 
she seemed to skim across the room. 

“ Oh ! Mummie ! ” she said. “ Oh ! 
Mummie ! ” 

The word was alien to her, she used it as 
an alien would, but the mother knew it was 
a label, the old nomenclature of the old 
relationship that was dead and would never 
come again. 

An immense and devastating loneliness 
filled her. 

“ We ought to go, Marchesa,” she said 
uncertainly. “ I am afraid you are tired.” 

For the answer the Marchesa inclined her 
head and put one finger on the bell without 
unclosing her eyes. 

Zuriel knelt and kissed her hand before 
the same young manservant who had ad- 
mitted them answered the bell. 

“ Good-bye,” Mrs. Whistler said to the 
apparently sleeping Marchesa. 

She never stirred. 

Mother and daughter went out into the 
cold January night. 


28 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


Zuriel said, “ Fve been such a pig to you, 
Mother, so rude and nervy . . . you know 
I haven’t been sleeping a bit lately. I’d like 
to dance to-night . . . dance or sing or 
something. I do realise about you and 
daddie, I am appreciative, honestly . . . 
only I want my chance. Oh! it’s too wonder- 
ful 1 too wonderful 1 I can’t believe I ” 
Poppy Whistler let her chatter on ; she had 
her arm, tugging it unconsciously now and 
then in excitement, so she was free to stare 
up at the stars ; beyond them there glim- 
mered hopes. Women are humbler than 
men — they look up to their hopes while men 
look ahead so that they may draw level with 
them, therefore to men hopes realised be- 
come personal achievements, but to women 
they continue to remain blessings granted. 


Ill 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 

T hey sat eating porridge without 
milk out of different-sized bowls. 
It was beautifully cooked porridge 
and they ate contentedly and satisfyingly. 

An open, very modern anthracite stove 
cast a fan of rosy light that included them 
all ; the tired, pretty girl with the large delf 
blue bowl, the dark, short-necked girl with 
the smaller Sussex ware bowl, and the 
young man with the smallest leadless glaze 
bowl. 

“ It’s just occurred to me,” he grinned, 
“ we’re exactly like the three bears. ‘ So 
the great big bear took the great big bowl, 
the middling sized bear took the middling 
sized bowl, and the teeny weeny bear took 
the teeny weeny bowl — and finished it all 
up.’ ” He went and put his bowl on a small 
gate-legged table, snicking on the light as 
he passed the switches. “ Ann, you’re a 

29 


30 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


porridge princess, a priestess of the double 
saucepan. You oughtn’t to be making 
exotic clothes in London. You ought to 
marry a brawny Highlander and have a 
heathered hill opposite your wee house so 
that you could watch your ten children 
against the skyline marching to school and 
know they carried round and richly furnished 
tummies beneath their kilts to battle with 
the cru-el world.” He paused in front of an 
easel and stood back. “ Now that is good, 
my gentle friends, and no one else will think 
so.” 

The girl with the short, camellia-white 
neck watched him absorbed, but the pretty 
girl contemplated him idly as if his presence 
came and went in her consciousness. She 
took a small tin of golden syrup and watched 
a golden worm unwind from the spoon on 
to the remainder of her porridge. 

“ The Marchesa has lent her house again,” 
she observed casually. “ Those socks of 
yours are sure to have dried on the stove by 
now ; if you change them to-night I’ll wash 
and darn your other pair.” 

The man by the easel did not hear. She 
lifted the socks and held them a minute 
against her tired face to test their watoth. 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 31 

then turned them ready to put on and rolled 
them up. 

“ Isaacs was in the shop again to-day,” 
observed the girl he called Ann. “ He came 
in his white Rolls-Royce.” 

“ It must have looked like a snowball in a 
coal-mine down our street.” 

“ He would have me go out and see it. 
Of course it had a crowd of kids round it. 
One of them said, ‘ Hi ! mister ! where’s 
Mary Pickford ? ’ and fled. That’s what it 
looks like.” 

“ Did he say anything about the con- 
tract ? ” 

“ He always harps on it, you know, five 
hundred pounds down for each of us the 
day we sign a three years’ agreement with 
him. You know his slogan ‘ Make for 
Millions.’ He carolled it at me till he shut 
the canary up. I pointed out that beautiful 
things could never be duplicated in their 
original beauty nor created by the dozen. I 
instanced the Venus of Milo.” 

“ What did he say ? ” 

“ Said she was overrated. Personally he’d 
like to meet the man who’d give up his seat 
to her in a bus.” She paused. “ He’s 
waiting for us to fail. He wants us. He’s 


32 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


opened another branch in Croydon, same 
idea, blue paint and aluminium lettering. 
He showed me a frock he’d had duplicated 
in fifteen different sizes. He made me try 
the hooks and eyes. They seemed welded 
on. He’s instructed every saleswoman to 
point that out to the customer. He says 
loosely fixed hooks and eyes are a national 
failing. His great idea in business is to 
eradicate glaring home shortcomings and 
import unfamiliar successful foreign ones. 
He told me so.” 

The pretty girl carried the three bowls to 
the little sink and washed them up. As she 
reached for the check glass-cloth she observed 
that the people the Marchesa had given her 
house to hadn’t any servants.” 

“ How do you know, Stella } ” her brother 
asked. 

“ I saw someone frying sausages in the 
kitchen. She’s rather like a little sausage 
herself.” 

“ When did they come ? ” Ann queried. 

“ They must have come last night,” the 
man said unexpectedly. “ When I went 
round quite early this morning for some 
anthracite the girl was leaning out of that 
diamond-paned window at the back. Her 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 33 

hair was down. It was like a mantle. She 
looked like one of Rackham’s fairy princesses 
— small and incredibly fine and pointed.’’ 

“ Did she see you, Bim } ” asked his 
sister putting away the three porridge bowls. 

“ She did. I was a romantic and im- 
posing figure in my grey trousers and khaki 
cardigan ; she probably thought I was an 
ex-officer dustman. You’ve got to know 
her, Stella, because I want to paint her more 
than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.” 

The short, dark girl spread her small, 
creamy hands to the fire. There was a 
waiting stillness in the crouch of her figure, 
the steady stare of her beautiful brown eyes. 

“ Imagine her in mole velvet with those 
wonderful mole velvet eyes ! ” 

“ My goodness, Bim, you seem to have 
made a pretty complete inventory.” 

“ I didn’t. She flashed on me with all the 
delicious unexpectedness of a rainbow. No 
rainbow was ever expected yet, that’s what 
makes them so fascinating. I always believe 
every rainbow is the last I shall see. I think 
everyone does. I drank her in with that sort 
of hunger.” 

“ You didn’t tell me anything about her 
at breakfast.” 

D 


34 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Dearest sister, I wasn’t there at break- 
fast.” 

“You were. You ate the last sardine.” 

“ That proves 1 wasn’t. I should never 
have done a thing like that.” He turned to 
the girl by the stove. “ You must see her, 
Ann. She’s extraordinary.” 

“ I expect I shall admire her,” she answered 
sweetly. “ I generally do fair people, being 
dark.” 

“ Are you going to fall in love for the first 
time in your life, Bim ? ” 

“ I don’t know, dear. If I do I shall have 
to change porridge bowls with Ann. I could 
not possibly ask the Goldilocks to share the 
teeny weeny one. Now look here, all ye 
children, gather round and I will play to 
you.” 

“ Play ‘ The Harmonious Blacksmith,’ 
Bim.” 

“ I couldn’t, old lady. I’m full of uplift, 
and oh ! for-the-wings-of-a-dove business.” 

Stella reached up and switched off the 
light. It was obviously part of a ritual ; 
again the cheery fan of light from the stove 
spread itself across the fioor. Stella curled 
on an old cushion in one rosy corner of it, 
but Ann Charlton moved back till her face 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 35 

was in the shadow that she might turn her 
suddenly bruised and aching thoughts in 
the gentle flow of the music and find balm 
and healing. 

The little shop in the shabby road, where 
she made the dresses Bim Redgold designed, 
seemed far away, the unending struggle to 
which the communion in the studio gave 
rich romance appeared suddenly drab and 
unending too. A lump came in her throat, 
but because of her utter self-control the 
little square creamy hands on her lap were 
quiet as the hands of a graven image. Like 
one of Rackham’s fairy princesses. ... A 
cloud of golden hair swept across her imagina- 
tion, blistering it. Because of that her 
dreams must fall. The thing that she had 
been wont to drape them on was still there — 
but like a strong nail on a tottering and under- 
mined wall. She dare not rely on it or even 
test it. 

It seemed to her in her arid loneliness 
that in his music Bim sang . . . sang like a 
troubadour, beneath a latticed window. Was 
it Rapunzel, in the fairy story, who un- 
bound her golden hair to let the knight 
climb up ? 

He ceased to play and the room fell quiet. 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


36 

for Ann it was like the stillness of something 
newly dead. 

There was a timid, but rather decided 
little knock at the door. 

Bim did not move from the piano ; and 
his sister went to the door without turning 
on the lights. 

A bunched figure stood there. 

“ I do hope I haven’t interrupted anyone,” 
said Mrs. Whistler apologetically, “ but I 
would be so grateful if you’d lend me a pinch 
of tea. The shops are closed and would you 
believe it ! they’ve sent cocoa ! I can’t bear 
it ! The Marchesa di Schundo has lent us 
the house while she’s in Italy.” 

Stella switched on the light. 

“ Of course we can,” she said. “ Do 
come in out of the cold. My name is Stella 
Redgold and this is my brother Bim. His 
real name is James Austin but he can’t stand 
it, and this is our friend Miss Charlton. She 
makes all the things Bim designs.” 

Mrs. Whistler came in cheerfully and 
shook hands all round, her chief interest was 
the stove. 

“ Well, I never ! ” she said. “ I’d never 
have believed the heat ; lovely, isn’t it, all 
open too. I call that splendid ! ” She 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 37 

beamed on them with round-eyed friendli- 
ness. “ It will be nice for Zuriel having 
young people in the garden, as you might 
say. Fve never been in a studio before. I 
always thought they were uncomfortable 
places, cushions and busts and things. A 
divan’s a fine idea, isn’t it ? That’s a box 
mattress on four casters, I suppose.” 

“ I sleep on it,” said Bim. “ Stella sleeps 
in the little room.” He waved his hand 
vaguely. 

To Mrs. Whistler he seemed a reassuringly 
ordinary man for an artist. He wore nothing 
that flopped ; even his shoe - laces were 
tucked in in a particularly neat way. True 
his clothes were rather a vivid shade of brown, 
but then so was he. His skin was a warm, 
healthy seaside colour, and the rather untidy 
tobacco-coloured shag of hair was a deeper 
shade of the same tone. The electric light 
varnished his brownness. She liked the 
contrast of his vivid, laughing blue eyes and 
his heavy, but very flexible voice. 

“ Suppose I make you a cup ? ” sug- 
gested Stella. 

Poppy Whistler shook her head decidedly. 
“ Now why not come in, the three of you, 
and have a cup with us } We’ve got the fire 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


38 

lit in the lounge and we feel like the only two 
people in a large hotel. It’s so depressing. 
Zuriel’s started a jumper. I’ve never known 
her do a thing like that before. It makes me 
feel quite funny to see her sitting there dig- 
ging the crochet hook into her finger . . . 
as if she were sickening for something. She 
was like that as a child — I think most chil- 
dren are — first she’d be as tiresome as tire- 
some, then she’d be very repentant and start 
making something useful, and then I’d find 
the rash.” She looked at Ann, decided that 
her hair was permanently waved and that 
she looked rather a bilious subject. 

“ We’d like to,” said Bim. 

‘‘ I must be getting back,” said Ann. 

Poppy Whistler decided that she was a 
bilious subject ; she had a yellowy creamy 
look. Her eyes were magnificent. She had 
probably been the sort of little girl you sent 
to parties with vague misgivings that were 
always justified. 

‘‘ Oh ! Ann ! Come ! ” Bim broke in 
impetuously. 

Ann nodded and smiled. It was a queer 
smile, it lit her face and then suddenly went 
out leaving it dark and dull and a little 
sullen. 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 39 

“ I got some real Scotch shortbread/* 
Mrs. Whistler said cheerily. “ I never can 
resist it, it*s the lovely rich buttery taste. 
Of course I never ought to touch it. Funny 
how if you know you love a thing and it’s 
bad for you you’re always seeing it in shop 
windows. I used to cure myself by weigh- 
ing myself on those tube station weighing 
machines. It was easier to be harsh with 
yourself when the tight skirts were in, but 
with the present fashions, and your clothes 
drooping and dropping all over you, sleeves 
like wind screens and everything, there does 
seem room for the things you fancy.” 

Bim was looking in the mirror intently. 
Ann, always alert to him, saw him shake 
down one trouser-leg and tweak his brown 
tie. She had never seen him betray the least 
interest in anything but cleanliness before. 
For her it had the significance of secret 
preparation. 

Stella was chatting easily as to an old friend. 
Her words bubbled rather formlessly because 
they came from no particular depth and 
sought no conscious entry into her hearer’s 
intelligence. She responded instantly, as 
youthful shallowness always will, to the un- 
critical and unanalytical listener, and she 


40 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


deemed Poppy Whistler, with her funny 
round body and eyes, to be both. 

“ I teach rhythmic dancing. Fm only a 
pupil teacher. One doesn’t get much. If 
it were not for the Marchesa it would not be 
possible for me to stay in London. She’s a 
perfect old dear. Of course we amuse her, 
Bim amuses her. She’s always expecting 
him to do wonderful things.” 

“ What is rhythmic dancing ? ” Mrs. 
Whistler smiled. 

“It is the powerful expression of the 
beautiful in the individual,” said Stella a 
little self-consciously. 

Mrs. Whistler dismissed it with an under- 
standing nod. “ I see, not for ballroom 
dancing.” 

Bim looked at Ann, his eyes twinkled. 

“ Well, Zuriel will think I’ve got lost. 
That’s the damper is it ? Fancy, your push- 
ing it in will reduce the consumption of 
anthracite till you come back. It’s very 
economical, isn’t it ? I call it a wonderful 
thing. You won’t need your hat. Miss 
Charlton, it’s only just across the garden.” 

“ Well, I thought I could go out through 
your front door, I mustn’t stay more than a 
minute or two.” 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 41 

As they crossed the tiny dark garden under 
the stars together Mrs. Whistler said genially, 
‘‘ Of course, some people can’t touch short- 
bread, it’s so rich ; we’ve got some very nice 
biscuits we brought from Margate.” 

“ I love shortbread,” said Ann. 

“ Ever try a pinch of bicarbonate of 
soda ? ” 

“lam never bilious,” said Ann. 

Mrs. Whistler sounded a little disappointed. 
“ Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it ? ” 

At that moment, roofed in by the same 
glittering arrangement of stars, Henry 
Whistler in Cannes was looking at a photo 
of her taken twenty years before — much the 
same Poppy, hovering round-eyed between 
buxomness and sheer adipose. 

His eyes were very worshipful. 

A smooth, good, honest little gentleman 
this Henry Whistler, with his neat pink face 
and spruce white whiskers, his steady, un- 
imaginative blue eyes, a little fellow who 
walked circumspectly and steadily between 
high hedges towards a certain objective, who 
never felt the lure of tangled byways or the 
need for wide horizons, a steady little fellow 
to whom had been vouchsafed a tempera- 
mental incapacity for adventure. 


42 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


When he was in his neat, perfect-fitting 
white silk pyjamas he took his immaculate 
evening clothes and shook first the coat and 
then the trousers over the ornate scarlet silk 
eiderdown. 

A sheaf of French notes, some English 
silver, English pound notes and a half- 
sovereign fell out. 

He fondled them absentmindedly as one 
might do the ears of a dog, his eyes on his 
wife — then he smiled a rather quaint, twisted 
little smile not unlike that of his daughter 
Zuriel. Then he swept the money, un- 
counted, into a little green bag and put it 
away and drew the red rep curtains across 
the window. 

Below him lay the enchanted mystery of a 
foreign city at night, but he never glanced 
at it. It la}^ beyond the mental hedges 
through which he took his tranquil and un- 
troubled way. 

In bed he had a little homely chat with the 
God he had learnt to know at St. Columb 
Minor Sunday School, Cornwall. His 
prayers went up with the assurance of carrier 
pigeons. He released them from the same 
little mental cages each night. He felt they 
knew the way. 


MRS. WHISTLER MAKES FRIENDS 43 

Down in the elaborate, stuffy parlour his 
landlord grumbled. 

“ Always yesterday’s egg for me and to- 
day’s for him. One grows tired of it. He 
is a little, simple man and you are afraid of 
him.” 

His wife patted the flat hennaed loops of 
hair over her ears, lit a cigarette, and shrugged 
her narrow, stooping shoulders. 

“ Eh bien ? ” she said. ‘‘ Does one not 
know what he is ! ” 


IV 


A BUSINESS PROPOSITION 

S OME people are physically subser- 
vient to surroundings, they are sucked 
into the court drawing-room or the 
crowd in the fat lady’s booth with the 
same completeness ; they would be equally 
indefinite launching a battleship or securing 
a cup of tea at a station buffet. 

Zuriel was saved from this chameleon pro- 
pensity ; she stood out from her surround- 
ings with the clarity and distinction of a light 
in a fog. 

Therefore, as Bim first saw her in the 
Marchesa’s hall she appeared with the sur- 
prising vividness of a living figure against a 
rich and fantastic tapestry. The charming, 
harmonious room seemed woven behind and 
round her. 

Rugs and skins covered the red-tiled floor, 
faded rugs that could gleam unexpectedly in 
the sunlight with the brilliance of discovered 
44 


A BUSINESS PROPOSITION 


45 


jewels. Heals had brought ultra-modern 
fantasy with white-vellum lampshades, and 
candle shields on which danced delicious 
little black figures, little dumpy, dully-beaded 
Victorian footstools were dotted about, an 
exquisite gold mirror reflected a fire screen 
exquisitely embroidered, some of the creased 
and dimpled goddesses that Mrs. Whistler 
detested so were works of a master hand — all 
ages, all phases of decorative expression were 
jumbled in that pleasant room, yet they were 
grouped with such charm that they achieved 
an almost sentimental harmony. It was like 
the gathering of a clan comprising many 
generations under the roof of a proud and 
sympathetic hostess. 

‘‘You were such ages. Mother. I took 
my hair down, every beastly hairpin was 
glued in. Oh ! ’’ she sprang to her feet. 
Her extraordinarily fair hair shrouded her. 

“ Well,’’ said her mother easily. “ They 
can’t think you did it purposely, because 
you didn’t know they were coming in. 
My daughter. Miss Reddald. ... It was 
Reddald } ” 

“ Redgold,” smiled Stella. She thought 
Zuriel the most attractive thing she’d ever 
seen. She was as frankly delighted and 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


46 

intrigued with her as a child with a beautiful 
dolL 

“ Miss Charlton/’ chattered on Mrs. 
Whistler. “ She makes dresses.” The 
vague infelicity of that struck her and she 
sought to modify it tactfully. “ Not the 
ordinary sort you buy,” she added. 

Ann’s involuntary smile was devoid of 
resentment or pique. 

“ You’re up here for the winter season ? ” 
said Ann. 

Zuriel nodded. She had made a long, 
shining plait of her hair. It made her look 
incredibly young and lovely and innocent. 
She did not twist any of her remarks or 
glances in Bim’s direction as women usually 
did. 

‘‘ I’ll go and put the kettle on,” said Mrs. 
Whistler. ‘‘We haven’t any maids. Are 
there any maids to be got ? I think I shall 
have a man. They look nice and you get 
about fifty applications to an advertisement. 
If a man opens the door people always think 
you’ve got a large staff downstairs. I shall 
do the cooking and Zuriel can do the dusting. 
I hate more than one, I always say the day 
you can’t go into your own kitchen and 
make a good cup of tea any time your home 


A BUSINESS PROPOSITION 47 

life’s all over and you might as well be in an 
hotel.” 

“ Have you been living abroad ? ” asked 
Stella. 

Mrs. Whistler glanced over her shoulder 
as she went out of the door ; “ Margate,” 
she vouchsafed. 

Bim had moved near Zuriel. 

“ I wonder,” he said, “ if you are going 
to like town.” 

‘‘ I am if I get all the things I want out of 
it,” said Zuriel. “ I’ve only six months to 
get them in, you know, and if I’ve failed I 
must go back.” 

“ To Margate ? ” 

‘‘To everything,” said Zuriel. 

Mrs. Whistler pattered back with the short- 
bread and the biscuits. 

“ Not quite boiling yet,” she murmured. 

Stella crossed over to Ann, and they stood 
looking down at the burning logs together 
and speaking in low voices. 

“ She’s awfully unusual, Ann.” 

“ Yes, she is.” 

“ It’s that very fair, almost silvery^hair and 
those dark eyes.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Are you tired to-night, Ann ? ’ 


48 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Yes.” 

‘‘ Oh ! I wish you and Bim could make 
enough money so that you needn’t do every- 
thing yourself.” 

“ Perhaps we shall some day.” 

“ You don’t seem very hopeful.” 

“ Not to-night,” said Ann. 

“ I often feel like that myself about the 
dancing,” said Stella. 

Mrs. Whistler came in with the tea. She 
had the rare gift of not only being but seem- 
ing abundantly hospitable. There was an 
obvious childish gladness and pride in sharing 
whether it was her food or her thoughts. 
She was the type of woman who rather 
relishes a borrowing neighbour. 

“ Now there ! ” she said, “ absolutely 
fresh brewed. Sugar, Miss Charlton ? Miss 
Reddald, do cut the shortbread. Zuriel, take 
the lid off the biscuit box, dear, and pass 
them round.” 

The mellowness of the pleasant room with 
its strangely harmonious lack of period en- 
compassed them, the soft, uninsistent lights, 
the leap and glow of the log fire made a 
peaceful, happy atmosphere. Actually there 
is far more conscious restraint among old 
friends than new acquaintances, they spoke 


A BUSINESS PROPOSITION 


49 


with freedom and the dawning feeling of 
genuine liking. 

“ Sugar, Miss Reddald ? Fancy ! the 
Marchesa told us you taught dancing. She’s 
a wonderful old lady, not that I want to get 
as old myself. I’d like to pop off while I’m 
still spry.” 

“ She dopes,” said Bim. 

Mrs. Whistler stared at him with her round 
eyes like soft velvet buttons. 

‘‘ Good gracious ! Sugar, Mr. Reddald ? ” 

“ Romance is her dope,” said Bim. 
“ Second-hand romance.” 

“ Zuriel met her in a shelter,” said Mrs. 
Whistler. 

“ She’s easy to talk to,” said Stella. “ You 
find yourself going on and on. I don’t know 
what it is.” 

“Well, she never interrupts with bits 
about herself,” said Poppy Whistler ; “ that’s 
what stops older people knowing everything 
younger people have to tell — the little bits 
they keep popping in about themselves.” 

Bim chuckled. Ann by the fire smiled 
faintly. Stella said : 

“ Didn’t you know her before you talked 
in the seaside shelter, and yet she lent you 
this house ? She must have lent it to you to 


50 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


watch you get something that she thought it 
would be amusing to watch you get. Did 
she ask you to write to her ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Yes, she always does. She’s an amazing 
old lady. Fm rather scared of her. It’s 
Bim she’s interested in, not me. I always 
feel she’s watching me think.” 

“ I was very fed up one day,” said Zuriel 
with her eyes on the fire. “ It was bitterly 
cold and I had a chilblain and father had 
just told us he was going to Cannes for six 
months and leaving us at Margate. I’m not 
the sort of person who talks to people, not 
even on long railway journeys ; mother is, 
but I’m not. I can’t understand it now. I 
found myself telling her all sorts of things 
and then she asked me to come and see her.” 

“ And then she found out Zuriel didn’t 
know what her own father did for his living 
and never had done, and then she fairly 
loved her,” said Mrs. Whistler. 

“ She would ! ” said Bim. 

“ And don’t you know ? ” said Stella, 
frankly and unashamedly intrigued. 

“ No,” said Zuriel. 

A little silence fell ; then Mrs. Whistler’s 
murmuring voice. “ Any more tea for any- 


A BUSINESS PROPOSITION 


51 


one ? Now if we only had some chestnuts 
to roast.’’ 

Bim spoke to Zuriel. 

“ So you chose a chance to adventure. 
You persuaded your mother to accept the 
offer ? ” 

“ It was an awful job,” said Zuriel. “ But 
it’s my only chance. When father comes 
back, life will go on at Margate just the same 
— ^luxury and empty days crowded with little 
things, making and buying dresses with an 
awful lot of discussion, dresses that no one 
will see, ordering food and books in the same 
spirit.” 

“ So you broke aw^ay and you’re never 
going back ! ” 

“ Not if I can help it,” said Zuriel. 
“ Father’s funny. He wouldn’t come to 
town to live or anything ; sometimes I feel 
he’s got a scheme, sometimes I honestly 
believe he thinks we’ve got everything we 
want. Mother has, but then I’m not like 
mother. If I broke away from them it would 
mean earning my own living.” 

“ And you wouldn’t like that ? ” 

“ No,” said Zuriel frankly. “ So I took 
this chance. At least I shall see people and 
go about a bit. How would you like to be 


52 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


shut in a cage, even if it were a very comfort- 
able cage ? ” 

“ I should hate it.” 

“ You would,” said Zuriel. “ I can assure 
you of that.” 

Bim said, “ I should think the Marchesa 
would enjoy very amusing letters.” 

Zuriel looked at him. 

“ Of course, you’d think it finer if I hewed 
a career for myself. I can quite see that. I 
haven’t got anything to hew it with but a 
nursery-governess equipment, and that’s no 
good. There is nothing I could do where I 
could meet the people who are going to call 
here.” 

“You are extraordinarily honest,” he 
said. “ I don’t know what I think. I 
haven’t met anyone like you before.” 

“I’m not dishonest. I want certain things, 
and I’m prepared to pay the price for them. 
I’m not speaking as an adventuress or a 
cynic ; it’s a cold business proposition 
really, an exchange.” 

“ But aren’t there joys in life, the richest 
and gayest joys that no one gives you. Miss 
Whistler, that come from being what you 
are, seeing how you see, hearing how you 
hear.” 


A BUSINESS PROPOSITION 


53 


“ I see what you mean/’ said Zuriel, 
“ but then you see there isn’t a picture in 
the world that can make me feel like quite a 
lot of pictures probably make you feel. I 
haven’t a book that opens naturally in 
certain places because it’s been opened so 
often there. You’re an artist, I’m an ordinary 
girl. The joys you speak of are just as 
selfish joys as mine really.” 

“ When I came in and saw you in the 
lamplight with your hair in a golden veil 
round you you became for me an undeniably 
beautiful picture. I was so grateful to you 
for being so unusual.” 

“ Then I am unusual ? ” queried Zuriel. 

“ Intensely.” 

“I’m glad about that.” 

He looked at her, puzzled and fascinated, 
blind by natural desire and inclination to the 
aspects of herself that she presented so un- 
compromisingly, grateful with a sort of 
glowing gratitude for her great physical 
charm, the rarity of her colouring. 

Ann rose to her feet. 

“ I must be getting back,” she said. “ No, 
please everyone ! I know the front-door 
catch so well.” 

Generally Bim walked back with her. 


54 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

talking animatedly, fantastically, charmingly 
of a hundred and one things ; now he said 
cheerfully from his seat by Zuriel, “ Good 
night, good old Ann.” 

She carried that with her through the 
streets, making a little heavy cross of it and 
hugging it as women wilL “ Good night, 
good old Ann.” 


V 


IN THE NEST 

T he tall violinist placed her hands 
all pointing and projecting beyond 
her knee, so that they might show 
to the best advantage and continued the 
discussion. 

“ If you want to achieve financial success 
you must understand the popular imagina- 
tion and never go above or below it — that is 
the success of Chu Chin Chow and Cairo, 
It is the East as man yearns for it. Satisfy 
the Englishman’s conventional yearnings 
and he will pay good red gold for his 
dope.” 

There was a little party in the delightful 
lounge. 

The new manservant came and went among 
the guests with cakes and sandwiches and 
the silent solicitude of the well-trained curate. 
He was a great success. Mrs. Whistler 
followed him with a round and beaming eye. 
55 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


56 

She would like to have told everyone his 
father had been an Oxford professor. 

There were yellow roses and lilies of the 
valley and a large flat bouquet of Parma 
violets scattered about the room, tributes 
from young men who had called at the 
Marchesa’s request and come again and yet 
again. 

There was no doubt that Zuriel intrigued 
them and that they amused her like the 
portion of a rapid entertainment from which 
she was fiercely resolved to extract every 
moment of distraction and excitement. 

One of her chief charms was that every 
time they called they felt they knew her less 
and desired to know her more. 

There was no doubt that Poppy Whistler 
enjoyed each day ; carnival it certainly was, 
blatant masquerade, but it satisfied her 
hitherto suppressed desire to be hospitable. 
She liked to make people comfortable and 
happy ; and they sat and talked about them- 
selves and so her shrewd estimate judged 
them to be both. 

Almost every night in the privacy of her 
charming green and white bedroom, with 
its daffodil chintz and daffodil-coloured 
eiderdowns, she questioned Zuriel. To have 


IN THE NEST 


57 


a fire every night in your room and shaded 
lights and a daughter of twenty-two with no 
confidences is rather a waste. 

She’d say pensively : 

“ You haven’t met him yet ? ” and Zuriel 
would reply with crisp and uncompromising 
directness, ‘‘ Met what ? ” to which her 
mother secretly dashed would reply, The 
man, darling.” Once Zuriel admitted in a 
burst of candour, “ All the men who come 
here are settled in business or art and making 
comfortable little incomes. They tell me 
of all the wonderful things they have seen. 
I am not one of those women who can live 
second-hand, not even through the honey- 
moon. I want a man who will open 
doors for me, not slam them in my face. 
When I find him I shall marry him and 
be exactly the sort of wife he thinks he 
wants.” 

“ It all sounds very dangerous,” said Mrs. 
Whistler. 

“ Life goes on after the honeymoon and 
the first year of marriage . . . that’s what 
English girls are trained to forget and that’s 
why they’re always coming such secret 
muckers,” said Zuriel, with a sudden flash 
of her mother’s shrewdness. 


58 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

Mrs. Whistler felt the fire was indeed 
wasted. 

They did not light the candles that after- 
noon, they sat in the flicker of firelight and 
talked, lit discussion as children light Roman 
candles, for the fun of seeing them flare. 

There was the violinist, a successful 
woman poster-artist in the black gown of an 
archdeacon’s wife, a tall dramatic critic with 
the largest Adam’s apple in London, and a 
little woman who reared better babies ” 
somewhere in the slums and answered 
mothers’ letters in a large woman’s paper to 
enable her to buy clothes for them. 

Zuriel sat on a hassock looking like a brood- 
ing Madonna and thinking of the dress she 
was to wear that evening at a first night with 
the critic. 

Bim Redgold let himself into the house by 
the garden door and found them sitting there. 
They all knew him. They all respected his 
work. None of them expected him to make 
money. He was eulogised in the little 
magazines that never live long because they 
understand art but not make-up. They 
knew of the little tiny shop where Ann with 
the help of a hook-and-eye girl created the 
wonderful dresses he evolved. There flickered 


IN THE NEST 


59 


in all of them that spark of absurd idealism 
that is unquenchable in the creative artist, 
however low his form of creation. At the 
sight of him, lean and brown and grinning, 
it strengthened. 

“ Signed on with your Jew yet. Red- 
gold ? ’’ 

‘‘ Good Lord ! No ! ” 

“ Still the little lonely, unrequited way to 
glory ? ” 

‘‘ That’s the idea.” 

“ Making anything } ” 

“ We’re making the things we love to 
make.” 

The critic swallowed his Adam’s apple 
twice. “ That’s everything.” 

The violinist said, “ I always feel super- 
stitious about the man who is making a 
fortune by doing what he loves. I feel as if 
every motor-bus is a menace. I know one 
or two men who have audiences who crowd 
to hear them play the things they love to 
play, and I never hear of them having a 
cold without a dread they’re going to die. 
It seems to me the height of ecstasy, to be 
paid magnificently for what you love doing.” 

“ One must be true to oneself.” It was 
an involuntary statement Bim made. 


6o 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Oneself changes/’ said the critic cyni- 
cally. 

Mrs. Whistler said to the little woman, 
“ Now tell me about your babies,” and they 
began to talk in low voices. 

Bim looked across at Zuriel. The fire had 
licked her pale hair to warm gold, her eyes 
brooded blackly in her little pointed pixyish 
face. He felt the familiar, exultant rush of 
gratitude for the joy that she gave him, her 
exquisite elfin angularities, and the charm of 
her unusual colouring. She seemed to him a 
questing fairy, a dryad perhaps . His imagina- 
tion, assigning to her a place no one else had 
ever held, absolved her simultaneously from 
all necessity to conform to standards in 
anything. It seemed to him in keeping that 
she should know so thoroughly what she 
wanted out of life. She was for him as devoid 
of crudity and vulgarity as an elf in search 
of cream or a mermaid in search of sea . . . 
these were her natural perquisites — ^these 
things she sought so frankly and candidly. 

He did not know he loved her, or if he 
did it seemed to him a state so natural he had 
no need to go shrimping in his soul to find 
out how it had arisen or where he stood with 
her. He knew that he stood nowhere. 


IN THE NEST 


6i 


They smiled at each other in the firelight 
like friendly children. 

Poppy Whistler saw the smile and knew it 
had no secret significance and that it implied 
nothing and her kind, worried old heart 
contracted a little. The shadow of the ulti- 
mate Prince Charming oppressed her. Prob- 
ably he would be one of those trying people 
who collected old things other people dis- 
carded (she had seen a collection of old jar 
lids worth three thousand pounds the previous 
day) and didn’t know how many under 
vests he had. Bim was so simple. For 
elderly women the baby is never quite dead 
in the blue-eyed man. Bim would have let 
her do little things for him and she was 
never at home with people unless she could 
do little things for them. If Bim and Zuriel 
married they wouldn’t have much money 
and they’d be glad of an old grandmother to 
have the baby by the sea sometimes. She 
saw a fat baby toddling about the garden of 
the bungalow in the summer sunlight . . . 
and her old man, she saw him, white whiskers 
and quiet blue eyes ... all of them patter- 
ing, pattering in the sunshine in the old 
garden. 

The woman who made better babies in 


62 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


the slums stopped her recital and looked at 
her shrewdly. “ I know just what you’re 
feeling,” she said inaccurately. 

The violinist was talking again. Poppy 
Whistler thought with a sudden rush of 
irritation that none of these clever London 
people talked normally, they all talked as 
if they were signalling someone in a crowd 
and expected to attract their notice. 

Bim said to Zuriel, ‘‘ Somehow you 
shouldn’t wear grey. Oh, child ! You don’t 
know how to dress a bit ! ” 

Poppy Whistler with her half-knowledge 
of psychology thought, “ Then he’s not in 
love or he’d never have seen that.” 

‘‘ I know I don’t,” said Zuriel. ‘‘ My 
clothes are only pretty.” 

“ That’s it,” Bim agreed. 

She could only stare physically and 
mentally. ‘‘ What else did women want of 
their clothes than prettiness ” In their 
hearts both she and her husband held the 
traditional middle-class belief that a girl 
looks nicest of all in a navy blue coat and 
skirt and a white blouse. 

“ Do you think you could make me look 
arresting ? ” 

“ I am sure of it.” 


IN THE NEST 63 

“ Then I shall come to you when I want 
to.” 

The manservant, with his faultless accent, 
announced : “ Mr. Nicholas Timothy.” 

His name conveyed nothing to them, and 
yet it fell like a stone thrown at the quiet 
of their firelight talk. Bim reached up and 
switched on the electric light. It was an 
unconscious acceptance of a suddenly created 
situation. 

Mr. Nicholas Timothy blinked rapidly in 
the sudden light, blinked funny little camels’ 
eyes, full of good humour. 

“ Well, I must be going,” the little baby 
expert said. 

He seemed to have broken them up ; 
they ceased to be a chattering community 
and became separate individuals of divers 
callings. 

The new-comer was shaking hands with 
Mrs. Whistler and telling her the Marchesa 
had asked him to call. 

His well-bred, twinkling little camels’ 
eyes paid appreciative tribute to Zuriel. 

The dramatic critic whispered to Bim, 
“ That’s the son of old Timothy of the Tiny 
Tea-Tables, Limited. What on earth did 
she ask him to call for ? ” 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


64 

‘‘ Her reasons are always obscure and her 
results amazing,” said Bim. 

The heir to Sir Terence Timothy of the 
Tiny Tea-Tables, Limited, sat down beside 
Zuriel and began to chat animatedly. He 
had a small, neat head covered with wavy 
brown hair very closely cropped, and a fierce, 
small toothbrush moustache. 

“ So you love dancing,” he was saying 
cheerfully. “ I liked it during the war, eve 
of Waterloo and all that sort of thing. Fm 
not so keen now. WeVe got a little affair 
on to-night, though. I wonder if you could 
come. There’s a Bridge table, so your 
mother wouldn’t feel dull. Mater likes 
mothers. She’s a funny old dear. Rather 
models herself on Queen Mary. I think 
you can overdo the convention business 
myself, you keep the cheerios away. Do 
come. It would be great sport. We’ve got 
the White Warblers quartette, awfully smart 
crowd, white face-cloth and facings. I 
always think it would be so jolly if we could 
go round dressed as we like. I should wear 
mv pink . . . junior John Peel.” 

“ You’d look splendid.” 

“ D’you really think so ? ” he beamed. 
“ It’s jolly of you if you do.” 


IN THE NEST 


65 

Zuriel did not make the mistake everyone 
else made about him. She did not sum him 
up as a pleasant fool ; she ceded pleasantness, 
but recognised shrewdness and exceeding 
common sense. 

He was vague about his job. She gathered 
that it was in the diplomatic service and that 
it embodied extremely jolly times with 
extremely jolly people. He was at present 
home on leave from Japan. As he talked she 
saw the wind tossing in cherry branches — 
millions of paper lanterns against a clear dark 
sky — all the traditional things she had learnt 
to know long ago through the medium of 
those pink penny books of fairy tales for 
children. Yet he talked neither as an artist 
nor a keen observer. It was all part of the 
jolliness. 

“ One gets banged about a bit, you know. 
I heard something about Copenhagen. Never 
know, may not go back. All very amusing.” 

“ Do you speak many languages ? ” 

“ Oh ! I get along.” 

Yet she was not deceived, and he knew 
she was not deceived and relished her 
exceedingly for it ; behind his casual, rather 
pronounced, stolidity she divined the same 
hidden hunger that possessed her, the hunger 


66 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


to know different things, to see things, 
different things, to lead a crowded life of 
interest — ^to fall asleep with the savour of 
to-morrow in her mind. 

“ You’ve travelled ? ” 

“ Oh, Switzerland, France, Italy . . . the 
beaten track, you know.” 

“ A — ah.” He was surprised to find he 
liked to think of her walking serenely along 
hedged and patrolled ways while he dashed 
into jungles and across prairies. 

“ I say,” he said, “I’m no end thrilled 
about to-night.” 

“ To-night ? ” she echoed blankly, and 
then suddenly her cool, sweet smile broke 
over him. “ Ah, yes ! ” 

When all the guests had gone, he last and 
most loth, Mrs. Whistler surveyed her in- 
explicable daughter. 

“ My goodness, Zuriel ! ” she said. “ If 
your father knew the son of that man had 
been here ! The times I’ve diverted his mind 
from what you might call a dull meal, 
especially on the maids’ Sunday night out, 
by just mentioning Sir Timothy.” 

Zuriel folded her charmingly kept hands 
and chanted in her charmingly modulated 
voice : 


IN THE NEST 67 

“ A little, but of the very best. Lock’s 
for hats — Simpson’s for a good English 
dinner . . . Scott Adie’s for tartans . . . 
Box’s for shoes . . . Buszard’s for wedding 
cake. A little, but of the very best. The 
best will advertise itself. England has become 
the dumping-ground for the trash of Europe, 
Asia, Wasia and Masia. Pom-pom ! ” she 
paused. “ Daddie is like that. In a way it’s 
awfully nice. But the people who can 
afford things the way he wants them are few 
and get fewer every year, and the people 
who’ve got money don’t want things that 
last, they want things that look attractive 
and want constantly renewing.” 

‘‘ Apart from all that you are going to that 
first night.” 

“ Not now,” said Zuriel. 

Her mother brushed this away. 

“ You know how Sir Terence Timothy 
made his millions, Zuriel — pink satin panels 
and rose-shaded lights, good orchestras and 
terrible food. That’s what the Tiny Tea- 
Tables Company is built on. His old mother 
used to go to Farringdon market and choose 
her own things until she died.” 

She paused. “ Oh ! how I have heard 
your father talk ! ” 


68 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Well, this boy hasn’t got anything to do 
with it ! ” 

“ He’s of the brood.” 

“ It sounds like the cinema.” 

She sat down on the floor tilting her 
charming head back and laughing. 

“ I’ve got such a headache. I’m going to 
lie down.” 

“ What can I do for it, dear ? ” 

“ Go and telephone the sad news to the 
very excellent man who expects to take me 
to the theatre to-night.” 

Mrs. Whistler looked at her dispassion- 
ately. 

Well, no one would think you hadn’t 
been used to London life,” she submitted. 


VI 


ZURIEL STANDS ALONE 


M rs. whistler wrote to the 

Marchesa in Italy. 

“ I said it was a regular cuckoo’s 
nest and that’s what it feels like. I don’t 
say I don’t enjoy bits of it. I’d enjoy it 
better if Lizzie didn’t send me on my 
husband’s letters asking me if the first snow- 
drops are up and goodness knows what. I 
can’t really see what fun you get out of it, 
but I expect you’ve your own way of enjoying 
a joke. Quite a lot of people have called. 
Many of them have got such poses. They 
never take them off even for a minute. They 
seem to find me a bit of a joke sometimes. 
They must get tired of their poses sometimes, 
but I suppose they get used to them like a 
woman I knew who wore a pearl dog collar 
to hide cut glands. She spoilt the gems 
getting into a hot bath with them on. I don’t 
find my week goes very far. We have 

69 


70 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


a morning woman and an awfully good man 
and I do the cooking myself. Urn not casting 
any aspersions when I say the white paint 
looks cleaner than when we came. I believe 
Mr. Redgold in the garden is in love with 
Zuriel, but I don’t think he knows it. Miss 
Ann Charlton does ! I feel rather sorry for 
that girl. Zuriel says she could be beautiful. 
I can’t see it. Stella says she’s got tempera- 
ment, but I can’t see that’s much good 
either, if you keep it all buttoned up tight 
and wear low heels. Zuriel seems to like 
Nicholas Timothy best, only it’s not what 
you and I would call like. He’s travelled. 
I never could see anything in sailors and 
travellers, they always go off somewhere just 
as you’re going to have a baby and then come 
home and litter up the hall with tusks and 
elephant-hide umbrella-stands when there’s 
barely room for the pram. It seems a pity 
Bim Redgold and Ann don’t sign on with 
that Jew. I can’t see why not. It’s no good 
walking round full of individuality when 
you can’t afford to buy a clean collar to put 
round it. I went in and found them all 
eating porridge the other night. He’s design- 
ing a dress for Zuriel to wear to the Three 
Arts Ball. It’s a funny affair, all silvery 


ZURIEL STANDS ALONE 


71 


gold tissue ; he’s been to the British Museum 
studying up something or other. She’s going 
with Nicholas Timothy, that’s what makes 
it so odd. Ann is to make the dress. You 
can’t tell anything from Ann’s face. Zuriel 
doesn’t like any of her clothes now. Oh ! 
she’s taken to London all right ! ” 

The Marchesa derived much amusement 
from the excellent Poppy’s letters. 

Bim also wrote of Zuriel. 

“ She is perfectly wonderful, Marchesa ; 
yes, of course you knew. She’s dramatic, 
too, that would appeal to you with your 
tremendous flair for the dramatic. One 
does not feel what she wants out of life so 
much as the fact that whatever it is she will 
ultimately obtain it. We all serve her. I 
design her frocks. Ann makes them. She 
looks wonderful in them. We are utterly 
incidental to her. Lots of young men come 
to the house. Mrs. Whistler will tell you 
who they are. She cons them over and counts 
them with the romanticism of a young girl 
pulling off daisy petals, but Zuriel is utterly 
cool and tranquil. Their brains are hot 
with her, you can see it in their eyes, but 
there is something remorseless in her un- 
consciousness of all this. I don’t understand 


72 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


her at all, but I think about her all 
day and sometimes wake to think of her. 
You’ll say she’s Beatrice to my Dante. 
Yes, I know the acidity of your cynicism ! 
Perhaps she is. I like to see her decorated, 
surrounded with adorers. It seems fitting 
to me. Isaacs still persuades us, but we 
remain adamant. Ann even more fiercely 
than I. He has bought a house at Maiden- 
head. He has ordered two thousand pink 
geraniums for the beds and two hundred 
yards of pink net for the window curtains. 
He is going to entertain. Ann and I are 
asked down. The lure is the pink geraniums. 
You have never seen two thousand gathered 
in one place. Ann can’t see he’s a good 
fellow, but he is, there’s something almost 
impressive in the honesty of his greed for 
all the good things of this life.” 

So, in the South, the Marchesa put her 
human jigsaw together, waiting eagerly and 
hungrily for new bits, wrote to her elderly 
cousin in Cannes and received letters which 
set her shaking with elfin mirth, that set her 
old brown eyes gleaming beneath their 
penthouse brows, and her ivory claws tapping 
the arms of her chair. 

In London, Spring settled on a Hyde Park 


ZURIEL STANDS ALONE 


73 

snowdrop during a snowstorm, and went forth 
to buy mimosa in fur coats and wraps. 

Lizzie, sworn to secrecy, came up to spend 
the day with Mrs. Whistler and report on 
the Birchington bungalow. They spent the 
morning at Selfridge’s, lunched at Lyons’, 
and passed the afternoon at the Stoll Picture 
House. 

“ D’you like it, Lizzie ? ” said Mrs. 
Whistler when the two branches of coloured 
lights rose from the bowels of the earth 
before their enraptured gaze. 

“ My ! ” said Lizzie. 

A warmth stole over Poppy Whistler’s 
heart ; Lizzie was shrewd but she was 
simple ; simple enough to be shown things. 
Zuriel had never been, she looked at things, 
that was different. London became an 
exhibition by her to Lizzie. There was 
something comforting about the sort of 
person you could still show things to. Mrs. 
Whistler was beginning to forget that she 
gave Lizzie aprons every Christmas and 
conscientiously bought a tablet of cheaper 
toilet soap once a month regularly for her 
use. She pulled herself up sharply. 

“ This was built by a German as an 
opera-house,” she said. “ There was a lot 


74 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


in the papers at the time about our not 
understanding music and Covent Garden 
being a poky hole.” 

‘‘ Cheek ! ” snorted Lizzie. 

“ So they turned it into a picture house.” 

“ If he knew what he’d done for England 
I expect he’d turn in his grave,” said Lizzie 
reverently, looking round her with shining 
eyes. 

It was a shock after seeing Lizzie off at 
Victoria to find Zuriel sitting over the fire 
with young Nicholas Timothy. Warm from 
the pleasurable, but quite unconscious, exer- 
cise of her patronage Mrs. Whistler greeted 
him genially. She would have liked to sit 
a little before the fire chatting and furtively 
tweeking her petticoat up under her black 
skirt so that she might warm her legs, but 
the young man was up and off. 

Mrs. Whistler turned up both skirt and 
petticoat and comforted her small balloon- 
like limbs. 

“ Nicholas Timothy is the only young man 
that worries me,” she said. 

‘‘ He’s the only young man that worries 
me,” said Zuriel. “ I don’t know whether 
I amuse him, whether I please him or 
anything.” 


ZURIEL STANDS ALONE 


75 


“ D’you want to ? ” 

“ Well,” said Zuriel, “ that’s the only sort 
of man a girl is interested in.” She looked 
at her mother reflectively. “ How was 
Lizzie and how did she say the Bungalow 
was looking ? ” 

Mrs. Whistler put down her skirts. She 
stood peering down and trying to read her 
daughter’s face in the firelight. 

“ Zuriel,” she said, “ if it’s Nicholas 
Timothy, your father’ll go off the deep 
end ” ; the phrase was foreign to her and 
served to deepen her sudden apprehension 
and dismay. “ They stand for all he hates 
most . . . show and shoddiness. Oh, dear ! 
Oh, dear ! I would regret this crazy 
escapade if that’s what came of it. It would 
break father’s heart. All men have their 
prejudices and they’re stronger than most 
women’s religions.” 

The tears gathered in her eyes and rolled 
slowly down her cheeks ; through them she 
peered anxiously at Zuriel’s enigmatical face. 

‘‘You know what he is . . .no adultera- 
tion, the best simply, perfectly served and 
honestly named.” 

“ Yes, I know ; it’s a fetish with father.” 

“ Don’t let him come here so much. I 


76 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

couldn’t ever say to your father, ‘ ZurieTs 
engaged to the son of the man who’s running 
the Tiny Tea-Tables, Limited.’ It would 
be worse than telling him you’d changed your 
religion. I shall never forget how he went 
on that day he took me into their place for 
an experiment ; ’tisn’t an experiment I want 
to repeat ! A fly could have eaten the 
shilling ice in half a minute, and it was no 
more cream than my hat. He said to the 
girl, ‘ Why don’t you serve an honest firm ? ’ 
Oh ! I felt awful. She was one of those 
hippy young females. She put her hands on 
them and stared. It’s very hard to rise with 
hips ; you’re bound to make use of them 
sooner or later.” 

Zuriel rose to her feet. 

“We’re presupposing a great deal,” she 
said. “ Nicholas Timothy has everything. 
He’s a sort of Prince Charming. He’s got 
pots of money, he sees the world, he has 
friends everywhere. A man who has every- 
thing doesn’t give up anything unless . . .” 
She broke off. “ Besides, there are his 
people. You don’t know the aristocracy of 
the new rich. I wish I knew what father was ! 
I wish I knew. I don’t stand the chance 
other girls stand. A girl thinks a man’s 


ZURIEL STANDS ALONE 


77 


people must be nice because he’s nice, but 
a man believes a girl’s nice if her people are 
nice.” 

“ Your father,” said Mrs. Whistler, “ is 
one of the nicest men living.” 

Zuriel gazed into the fire. “ If I catch a 
man,” she said, “I’ve got to catch him all 
by myself. There aren’t any new ways, so 
I’ve got to be clever with the old ways.” 

“Are you in love with Nicholas Timothy ? ” 

“ No,” said Zuriel, “ but he’s the type 
of man I should like to live with after 
marriage.” 

“ I suppose he knows you’ve got a father ? ” 

“ Yes, I was vague. What else could I be ? 
I said he was retired. I hinted at the Civil 
Service.” 

“ My goodness ! ” 

“You think him a fool ? ” 

“ Well, I couldn’t say he was brainy.” 

Zuriel nodded. 

“ No,” she said, “ that’s just where he’s 
clever.” She paused. “ Mother, I simply 
must have more clothes.” 

“ You’ve lots of clothes.” 

“ No, I’ve dresses.” 

“ Isn’t it the same thing ? ” 

“ No, dear, it isn’t.” 


78 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Sometimes I could just pack up and go 
back to Margate.’’ 

“ I shouldn’t come with you.” 

Mrs. Whistler bent her head. 

“ Lizzie says the almond blossom is nearly 
out,” she said. ‘‘ Oh, Zuriel ! how I wish 
we were there to watch it.” 


VII 


life’s philosophy 

FLOWER woman strolled down the 



road with a heaped basket of flowers, 


the sun slid over and between the 
shabby houses so unevenly that it patterned 
her as if it shone through fretwork. Her 
attitude was an advertisement to the poverty 
of the neighbourhood ; she ate bread and 
cheese without even a flickering glance for 
customers ; shop girls, typists and mani- 
curists hurried home from snack lunches, 
tapping along on high, slightly turned heels ; 
a girl in the pretentious near-hospital uniform 
affected by the small shopkeeper-employer 
trundled a large pram ; a mongrel hunted 
joyously for fleas. 

Over these grimy realities threaded the 
azure blue of a peerless day ; the dirty 
little windows of the National Insurance 
druggists at the corner winked in the 
sunshine with the joyous fantasy of an 


79 


8o 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


Aladdin’s lamp and made mammoth jewels 
of the great bottles filled with coloured 
water. 

A dull lozenge of spring sunshine lay at 
Ann Charlton’s feet as she worked in her 
little shop ; it revealed the canvas backing 
of the cheap, worn oilcloth, and the age of 
Ann’s shoes. 

Finding the pallid footstool of sunshine 
gone she looked up to discover that the 
tall, bulky figure of Isaacs the Jew blocked 
it out. 

“ Good morning, mad one,” he greeted 
her gently and ironically. 

His neck, his wrists, his ankles were thick ; 
his black hair curled crisply. He was clean, 
with the perfect, immaculate cleanliness of 
the true Jew. 

He sat down and the pale sunshine settled 
again at her feet. 

She was creating a garment out of crimson 
velvet ; where the same sunshine flecked 
it it glowed like blood. Her strong cream- 
coloured face was bent ; he could not see 
her eyes, only her compressed mouth and 
something stubborn and yet appealing in the 
curve of her short, thick, exquisitely white 
neck. 


LIFE’S PHILOSOPHY 8i 

“ An order from the Vatican, I see,” he 
commented, “ We’re getting on.” 

She said in a muffled voice: 

“ I don’t know quite why you come 
here to rag. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t 
hinder.” 

He nodded to himself as if she had 
answered a question. His little brown eyes, 
like highly polished pebbles, twinkled at her 
kindly. 

“ I’ve just come from Redgold’s studio,” 
he said. 

“ Did you see Bim ? ” 

“ He wasn’t there. He was in the house. 
I’ll own she’s a looker. All Jews like fair 
women. It’s the Oriental in them.” 

“You mean Zuriel Whistler ? ” 

“ Why pretend with me, Ann Charlton ? 
I’m not worth it. My life’s job is undermin- 
ing woman’s strength of mind. It’s become 
as easy as stealing chocolates from a sleeping 
orphan. You don’t suppose I didn’t know 
why you stayed on in this filthy little mouse- 
trap. Women don’t do things for the love 
of the things, they do it for the love of 
someone.” 

She sat there un-selfconscious but with- 
drawn from him. He knew that her thoughts 


82 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


were not whirling about her like a swarm of 
bluebottles as women’s thoughts were wont 
to do. She was marshalling them steadily 
and in sequence. 

“ Why,” she said suddenly, “ when Fve 
always loved him, should it be Zuriel 
Whistler ? ” 

“ Because you’ve always been there.” 

“ Perhaps so,” she ceded. 

He had a tremendous respect for her, 
the respect of the physician for the patient 
who is motionless and unrevealing under 
suffering. 

‘‘ There are other things in life you know, 
Ann Charlton,” he said ; “ the luxurious 
animal things I’m always telling you about — 
good food, nice clothes and the things you 
like about you, money to buy the things you 
fancy . . . things you can get hold of. We 
may have souls. I don’t know, I’m sure. 
I’ve met good men and women who are 
positive they’re fitted with an out size in ’em, 
but souls are dull. I don’t understand ’em. 
You feed ’em on a Queen’s Hall Promenade 
concert or a shillingsworth of art exhibition, 
or a cuddle on the stairs at a subscription 
dance ; they can stand low fare all right, and 
all the time it’s like shoving stuff into a dark 


LIFE’S PHILOSOPHY 


83 

cage, you don’t know what’s growing there 
or whether it likes it. You can’t buy your 
soul a new hat or give it a blow out at 
the Savoy. There’s no satisfaction in 
souls. I like things you can feed and dress 
up.” 

“ And where does all this lead ? ” 

“ Back to me, my dear, everything leads 
back to me,” he smiled at her genially. 
‘‘ Why not join my show ? ” 

“ Because your show doesn’t appeal to 
me. 

“ It’s the same work you’re doing now,” 
he submitted patiently. “You make up 
Redgold’s sketches. You’re wonderful at it. 
You’d make up my artist’s sketches and 
hundreds of girls would duplicate them for 
thousands of delighted women. There’s 
romance in that surely ? Five hundred down 
the day you sign a three years’ contract ; 
why you could buy a little car and run it ! 
Why, you might go on carrying out Redgold’s 
own designs ” — ^his little eyes suddenly 
sparkled. “ If Redgold wants that Whistler 
girl he might sign for the money. I’ll try 
and hog-tie him while he’s batty.” 

Ann’s sweet and very generous mouth 
contracted a little. 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


84 

“ Bim wouldn’t be untrue to his ideals for 
anyone.” 

“ Ideals be damned ! All you miserable 
art people talk about the uplift of art and 
then go and sit on it so hard that it doesn’t 
get a chance to lift anything but your own 
little bunch. You’ve done that through the 
ages. Mass production of beauty — ^that’s 
your only chance of real uplift. If you 
artists had your way there wouldn’t be a 
duplicate butterfly in the world. There ’d be 
one in a museum nowhere near a tube or a 
bus route. It’s the cinema, paper patterns 
and the shop windows that keep beauty 
alive in women and sell the face creams, not 
the British Museum and the Wallace Collec- 
tion. I’m a true uplift merchant. I can 
make Mrs. Jones of the Nest, Streatham, 
look prettier than any of your tight-skinned 
bacchantes and a lot more respectable, in a 
wrapper costing one guinea, and every press- 
stud true to type.” 

He got up and paced the tiny room ; 
spirals of dust rose in the silvery sunlight 
wherever his foot pressed. Little beads of 
perspiration bedewed his broad, low forehead. 
As he hewed at his ideas he had the air of a 
man who uses unaccustomed tools. 


LIFE’S PHILOSOPHY 85 

“ You’re hypocrites, that’s what you are, 
and the tightest trades union in the world ! 
I ask you and Redgold to come and make 
beauty for the million, the millions that need 
it, and you won’t do it. It’s snobbery. 
That’s what it is. I tell you the beauty 
hunger in women is higher at this moment 
than it ever has been in history, and I’m 
going to feed it. You go into raptures over 
a picture of some titled Tommy Tucker 
that looks like a moth-eaten mattress, but 
you don’t realise that every jumper book 
published is helping culture,” he broke off 
abruptly. Well ? ” he shot at her. 

“ Well ? ” said Ann. 

“You don’t see things my way ? ” 

“ No,” said Ann, “ I don’t.” 

“ Well, there’s five hundred pound down 
for you the day you wake up. I want you, 
Ann, and I want Redgold more. He’d make 
my business.” 

“ And you’d control his inspiration ? ” 

“ Well, he’d have to design pretty things. 
Now that Russian blouse affair with the 
braces you had in the window, that would 
suggest Saturday afternoon clearing out the 
hencoop to my customers. I shouldn’t sell 
two models. Red’s not much good to my 


86 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


people either, really,” he waved his hand 
towards her work. “ Suppose Redgold 
marries this girl now, Ann Charlton, what 
about it ? ” 

“ She won’t,” said Ann, “ but what about 
it?” 

“ Well, you won’t want to sit about, I 
suppose ? ” 

Ann lifted her magnificent eyes. He had 
a momentary feeling of walking through 
them into an immensely high, sunlit, orderly 
place. It had the loftiness of a cathedral, 
but none of the conventional equipment. 
In the dimness he divined Ann’s drilled 
thoughts waiting to come forward into the 
sunlight. This was the sudden impression 
her quiet, sterling honesty gave him. It 
remained with him even when he knew 
himself back on the threadbare oilcloth in 
the shabby little shop. 

“ I shall want to sit about,” said Ann. 
“ Not with the idea of benefiting or serving 
Bim, though I’d do both if it were in 
my power, but I’m too honest to kid 
myself that’s why I want to be about. 
It’s just because ever since we started 
this little shop together, ever since I first 
knew Bim, there hasn’t seemed any other 


LIFE’S PHILOSOPHY 87 

place in the world for me but where Bim 
is.” 

‘‘ It’s a pity.” 

“ It is a pity,” echoed Ann. 

“ You know, Ann Charlton, I’d give 
anything if you were the type of girl I could 
feel sentimental about. Working together 
we’d have a shop in every town in the 
United Kingdom. I don’t want a girl who’ll 
make me think, I want a girl who’ll make me 
feel. I can talk to you and forget you’re a 
woman, but I don’t want to marry that. 
Take it how it’s meant, Ann Charlton.” 

“ I do,” said Ann simply. “ I don’t know 
why I disliked you so.” 

“ Because I’m a Jew, ’’said Isaacs. “ We’ve 
always got to wear it down at the beginning, 
but once we’ve got the nose through we 
follow quickly. It’s the nose that’s the 
trouble.” He laughed without rancour. 
“ I saw that golden dress Redgold made 
for that girl’s fancy dress. Why don’t you 
go too, Ann ? I’ll take you. You’d look 
lovely as a Madonna.” 

“ Does a Madonna stand a chance beside 
a golden Egyptian ? Besides, Bim isn’t 
going. She’s going with young Timothy, 
the son of the Tiny Tea-Tables Company.” 


88 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

“ Who is she ? ” 

“ She doesn’t know. The whole affair is 
romantic. The Marchesa lent them the 
house. She met Zuriel in a shelter in Mar- 
gate. They both have bungalows down 
there. Zuriel had had a dull life, not allowed 
to know anyone, very comfortably off, 
mysterious father. I’ll tell you the whole 
story as I know it.” 

He sat staring at her with his bright, 
piercing brown eyes ; a little wind woke in 
the narrow, shabby street, tossed bits of 
paper high in the air, twirled sticks of straw, 
moaned and lisped and fluted sentimentally 
to itself among the chimney-pots as if it had 
mislaid the country and sought it fitfully in 
the pale spring sunshine. 

“ Well,” said Isaacs, “ it’s a rum go. You 
think she’ll make every effort to get fixed up 
in the months that are left ? ” 

“ Not with Bim,” said Ann. 

“ He’s infatuated.” 

“ She’s so lovely, and what artist could 
refuse to serve beauty and make it more 
beautiful ? It’s a mission, besides it has an 
irresistible fascination.” 

“ And you ? ” 

“ Whatever happens I shan’t be any 


LIFE’S PHILOSOPHY 89 

nearer to him than IVe ever been or any 
farther away than I am at this minute ” ; 
the swift, sweet, sudden smile came to her 
face transforming it. “ It doesn’t seem to 
me that being loved makes any difference to 
one’s own love for a person, it only sort of 
rounds it off. I can’t quite express what I 
mean. I know Bim’s faults. He’s like a 
child in many, many things.” 

“ He’s a damn fool,” said Isaacs. 

“ Yes,” said Ann. “ I know,” and laughed. 

“ I suppose he talks to you about this 
girl ? ” 

“ Nearly all the time.” 

“ My God ! are you human ? ” 

“ Very,” said Ann. “ Not so human now 
in the sunlight talking to you, but when I 
wake in the night or making cocoa and wait- 
ing for the kettle to boil just before I go to 
bed — then I’m terribly human.” 

A man went up the road with a basket of 
draught excluders ; they were covered in 
scarlet bunting, and as he walked they 
wriggled like skinned snakes. The fresh, 
warm wind blew the ends of his neck scarf 
and he looked up at all the open windows and 
went on dispiritedly without crying his 
wares. 


90 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ I came really to ask you to motor down 
to Maidenhead with me and see my place, 
rd like to show it to you. There are ten 
thousand snowdrops out. Figures don’t 
fascinate you ? ” 

‘‘ Not personally,” said Ann. “ I’d feel 
rich with two of everything.” 

“You talk about freedom and the right 
to live your own life,” grinned Isaacs. 
“ Redgold has only two pairs of socks. Miss 
Redgold told me so. They were drying 
over a toast-rack on the top of the anthracite 
stove. That’s not freedom, that’s slavery ; 
why, he daren’t get his feet wet. He hasn’t 
the freedom of the London cat. Now get 
your coat on and come along. We’ll drive 
through Burnham Beeches and see whether 
the trees are out. The Pope can wait for 
his dinner jacket.” 

“ It’s an order, my poor blind friend. 
Bim has designed two of the pages’ dresses 
for ‘ Lingering Love.’ ” 

“ Is his name to appear on the programme 
as a dress designer ? ” 

“ No, but it’s a beginning.” 

“ And it’ll stop there.” He paused. 
“ Ann Charlton, do you make on an average 
two pounds a week ? ” 


LIFE’S PHILOSOPHY 


91 


No.” 

“ It is beautiful, but infinitely sad.” 

A crowd of children had gathered round 
the car. One of them blew the horn. It 
spat out such a vicious, unexpected note 
that they scattered hastily like a crowd of 
disturbed flies. 

“ Everything about this place gives me 
the pip,” said Isaacs. “ What made you 
take it ? ” 

“ When Everton Wryley made that little 
tea-shop at the end of Burchett’s Row famous, 
this was the thoroughfare for everyone. You 
know the book had the same sort of success 
as ‘ Sonia.’ Everyone came to tea to get 
‘ the atmosphere ’ and then some Duchess 
opened a little artcraft place almost next 
to it . . . and then it all fizzled out and 
no one came. It seemed as if it was going 
to be a fashionable art quarter at one time. 
We sold quite a lot of original models at 
fairly high prices. Then something else came 
along.” 

‘‘ With the people you cater for something 
else will always come along.” 

“ Are you going to lecture me all the way 
to Maidenhead ? ” 

“ No, I am going to exhibit to you some 


92 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


of the things that five hundred pounds down 
and a decent income would provide for 
you.” 

“ I have been looking at them for twenty- 
five years,” mentioned Ann lightly. 


VIII 


AN ORDER TO VIEW 

I T takes a strong woman to resist the 
role of fairy godmother, but it takes 
an even stronger man to resist the part 
of fairy godfather ; to the least imaginative 
it is so crowded with possibilities and so 
ripe for that gratification of the ego for 
which the psycho-analysts assure us even 
the finest of us live. 

Bim was not the temperament to refrain 
from pleasure-giving acts on the grounds 
that they had their basis in love of self. He 
was rarely reflective. He absorbed life as 
it were in chunks, finding each full of spice, 
lively in design and intriguing in colour. 

Zuriel became perhaps the most serious 
preoccupation of his zestful life, and it was 
through her that he first discovered himself 
to be a conscious and not an unconscious 
idealist. 

He could not walk around all Zuriel ; there 
93 


94 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


were bits that jarred him and disturbed him. 
He therefore absorbed her only from the 
front, as it were ; she became for him a 
beautiful picture, a symbol. To him there 
was something almost wistful in her honest 
selfishness that woke him to tenderness. 
The more steadfastly she strove to show him 
the tinsel in her lovely panoply, the more 
steadfastly he gazed at the beautiful and more 
obvious actuality. It was so well worth 
gazing at. 

He was thinking of her one evening as she 
came in. He was thinking of her as Joan of 
Arc riding in silver ; he saw her slim and 
straight in her armour, with her strange 
dark eyes and her silvery hair. Her eyes 
would have been for the king, the ultimate 
possibility, and the throne of France in 
actuality, and no less fine for that. 

“ Bim,” she said, “ money’s giving out.” 

She left the studio door open. Against the 
coarse grass in the tiny garden he could see 
the stinging gold of crocuses and the tremu- 
lous shaking of single snowdrops. A little 
wind stirred the pale, clenched buds and 
shook the rusty, dirty curtain of ivy on the 
walls. 

“ Whose money ? ” he said. 


AN ORDER TO VIEW 


95 


“ Mother’s,” she said. “ There’s enough 
to see us through the next two months if I 
have no more clothes. Nicholas Timothy’s 
leave is up in seven weeks. There was a 
woman to-day at the Savoy. He pointed 
her out to me appreciatively. You know 
what she was like, Bim . . . nothing, and 
yet . . . You could do it. It was black. 
All men like black. Mother’s never let me 
have a black frock. She says it’s the hardest 
thing a shop-girl has to fight when she leaves 
business, the feeling of being conspicuous 
in colours. You know what women like 
mother say, ‘ Time enough when you’re my 
age.’ It’s too late then, that’s what they 
never realise.” 

Bim’s brilliant blue eyes twinkled. He lit 
his pipe and the grey haze of smoke rose 
between that strip of gold-dusted spring 
outside and the girl who sat on his old divan. 
He had a sudden arid consciousness of lack 
of participation in both ; the haze between 
them and his eyes re-established their im- 
personality. 

“ Well ” he said, “ and how are things 
getting on ? ” 

“ Nicholas ? Just where they always were, 
just where they always have been. I don’t 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


96 

know any more than you. Oh ! Bim, Tm 
getting so nervy. I met his cousin last night. 
Not beautiful — but you know, Bim, some- 
thing I haven’t got. Hair slicked back and 
eyes like a Japanese, and a golden shawl — a 
thing Jose Collins might have worn and a 
huge comb of golden pheasant feathers. Yet, 
it was right, I can’t explain. I felt like a 
child sent to a party in cotton gloves. Horrid ! 
I cried in the car coming back.” 

“ What did young Timothy do ? ” 

“ Gave me an aspirin.” She paused. 
“ Any other man now . . .” 

‘‘ I would myself,” said Bim. 

He ceased to smoke, again he saw the 
crocuses and the girl, and the spring outside 
and youth on the divan, but now he saw it 
reluctantly as one who peeps almost against 
his will. He rose and stood leaning on the 
back of an arm-chair. Now he could no 
longer see the golden flowers or the snowdrop- 
flecked grass, only the rusty ivy mantling the 
walls. 

‘‘ What are we going to do about it ? ” he 
mused. 

She looked at him gravely. 

“ Nicholas Timothy has the only sort of 
career I’ve ever wanted to share. It’s so 


AN ORDER TO VIEW 


97 


near my secret dreams I sometimes feel it is 
a dream. He can give me almost everything 
IVe ever wanted. I like him too, Bim. We 
see things from the same angle. We want 
the same things, we’d work for the same 
things and enjoy them the same way when 
we got them ; surely it should be a happy 
marriage } ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Bim, “ about mar- 
riage. One sees things differently. I think 
to me it would come suddenly like golden 
gates. They would be suddenly there and 
one would go through because there would 
be nothing else to do, because all around one 
would be wilderness and there the peace and 
glory that passeth all understanding.” His 
eyes twinkled. “ But I quite see that you 
would want an order to view.” 

“ It would be safer.” 

“ Safety and marriage . . . it’s like think- 
ing of fireguards for angels.” He paused. 
“ So it’s clothes that’s bothering you ? ” 

“ Well,” said Zuriel, “ I’ve tried being 
myself and I’ve tried not being myself. I 
can’t learn to play emotionally or sing 
emotionally in seven weeks. It’s only left 
to me to look things.” 

“ You could look anything, child.” 

H 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


98 

“ All my clothes/’ she cried despairfully, 
“ are pretty.” 

“ That’s true,” he admitted. 

“ Oh ! Bim ! can’t you do something for 
me ? I want to be chic. I want to be un- 
usual. I want the life Nicholas Timothy 
can give me. It’ll last till I’m quite old. I 
know that nothing else will last with me. 
Nicholas will last with me too. This is my 
chance and perhaps my only chance. This 
path of life isn’t ours. I shan’t meet men 
like Nicholas when father comes back from 
Cannes. Please help me ! I’ll pay for the 
stuff if you and Ann ... oh ! Bim, I’ll 
make it up to you and Ann. . . . Mother 
can’t see ! She just can’t see ; and then of 
course, at the back, she doesn’t really want 
me to marry, Bim. It will mean my living 
abroad. Mother’s quite well educated, but 
she likes to think the whole world is peopled 
with blacks who smell and steal, lots of 
women do. She hates the life I want, and 
oh ! Bim ! I do want it ! I can’t bear 
Margate after this. Westgate when I might 
be in Tokio or Simla ... it would be hell. 
I’ll play the game with Nicholas too. I’ll 
look what he wants and I’ll be what he wants. 
It’s easier to guarantee that when you don’t 
adore a man than when you do.” 


AN ORDER TO VIEW 


99 


“ Suppose, out there, under some Southern 
moon, you meet another man ? ” 

“ I won’t. I know one can’t say things 
like that definitely, but I’ve always been 
able to stand back and look at things and 
people as if they didn’t belong to me and I 
didn’t belong to them. I did it when I was 
quite a little girl about mother and father, 
and it used to frighten me sometimes because 
I thought I’d go to hell. I had a nurse who 
was strong on hell. It seemed wicked to be 
able to see exactly where poor mother and 
father were stupid and middle class when 
they’d just given you a Christmas treat, just 
where they spoilt things for themselves as 
well as you.” 

“ It doesn’t sound comfortable,” Bim 
agreed. “You think if between Ann and 
me you are dressed like a young enchantress 
you will enchant ? ” 

“ Clothes do make a difference. Nicholas 
is sophisticated.” 

“ The white muslins and blue sashes are 
not for him, Zuriel ? ” 

“ Yes, because he’d appreciate perfect 
laundrying ; there are many things that 
wouldn’t do as well and most of them are in 
my wardrobe. Clothes do make a difference 


100 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


to men, Bim ; they do to you. I put myself 
in your hands. Fll wear just what you 
decree. Bim . . . please help me. Mother 
can’t see. I don’t suppose Ann can see or 
Stella, but I know. Clothes would make a 
difference to you ? ” 

“ Yes, they would.” 

“ Well, you’re an ordinary man.” 

“ Yes, I suppose I am.” 

He looked out into the tiny garden. He 
looked challenging. The absurd shag of 
sunburnt hair stood upright. Twilight had 
trailed forlornly across the garden as they 
talked, the crocuses seemed no longer the 
fairy chalices of spring, but lay wistfully like 
neglected beads of a broken amber necklace, 
the unclenching buds of the trees had lost 
their pallor and frailty against the fading sky 
— they garnished the tree with gnarled knots 
like some fantastic and devouring fungus. 

“ Perhaps,” he said stumblingly, “ you’re 
after the real things after all, Zuriel, I . . .” 

The dumpy figure of Ann blocked out the 
garden. She nodded cheerfully and waved 
her hand. 

“ I thought you’d like to know, Bim,” she 
said. “ I found a customer for that red 
gown.” 


AN ORDER TO VIEW 


lOI 


“ Was she dark and beautiful ? ” 

Ann shook her head. “ Fm sorry, Bim, 
she had red hair.” 

“ Good God ! Ann, you sold it to her ! ” 

“ She paid twelve pounds. She was going 
to wear it with a brown wig.” 

“ A brown wig ? ” 

Ann twisted her square, capable, cream- 
coloured hands. 

“ She was going to a fancy dress dance in 
it somewhere in Gunnersbury as Flora 
Macdonald . . . wasn’t she the girl who saved 
Bonnie Prince Charlie ? ” 

‘‘ She didn’t think. . . .” 

“ Yes,” said Ann slowly. “ That’s why 
she paid me twelve pounds. She thought it 
was fancy dress.” 

Bim laughed and waved his hand towards 
Zuriel. 

‘‘ Hordes and cohorts of customers await 
us on the horizon. Here is one, she demands 
the accoutrement of a young enchantress, 
spells, witcheries and all.” 

‘‘ I want to marry Nicholas Timothy,” 
said Zuriel. “ I haven’t any money to pay 
for the making of things now. Miss Charlton, 
but I’ll buy the materials and I’ll pay later. 
I know you’re the business partner.” 


102 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“Yes, Fm the business partner,” Ann 
said. 

“ It doesn’t sound a very businesslike 
proposition.” 

“ Oh yes, it does. Miss Whistler.” 

“ Then you think . . .” said Zuriel. 

“ I think you’ll get him,” said Ann ; she 
shivered suddenly. “ I don’t know why 
you have the door open. It isn’t summer.” 

Bim had not heard. He was looking at 
Zuriel. He turned to Ann, his eyes half 
shut. “ Oh ! Ann ! can you see her in 
green — ^petalled. I don’t care whether petals 
are out or in, beauty has no fashion, it is just 
beauty ; here and there a touch of tarnished 
silver so that her hair shall glow the brighter 
— and on her feet dull silver shoes,” he 
paused. “ Ann — she’s wonderful.” 

“ Yes,” said Ann. 

Once, in the days before the war and the 
days before she met Bim, Ann had gone on 
a Cook’s tour to Belgium. She was eighteen, 
impressionable. In a tiny chapel in West- 
pelaer they had found an old sacristan 
polishing the jewels on the Virgin Mary’s 
crown. Ann saw him again reverently 
gloating over the bits of gleaming polished 
glass. He begged them to admire her. He 


AN ORDER TO VIEW 


103 


had a little rosary of rough-hewn words with 
which to catalogue her praises. 

“ She didn’t always have a glass cover over 
her,” he said. “ I got the priest to order 
one. She’s wonderful.” 

“Yes, because the rats have gnawed her 
nearly hollow at the back,” whispered the 
sacristan’s wife. “ He knows it, but he can’t 
bear it mentioned.” 

“ Isn’t she wonderful ? ” cried Bim ; and 
Ann, as she had answered the old sacristan 
in the kindness of her big heart, answered 
him. 


IX 


THE NEW BRANCH 

I KNOW when a man goes about with 
a girl morning, afternoon and even- 
ing it doesn’t mean anything nowa- 
days,” said Sir Timothy to his son. ‘‘You 
can’t run fifty-three tea-shops full of 
cosy corners without getting the modern 
idea.” 

“ No, sir,” said young Nicholas. “ I 
suppose not.” 

Father and son had the same tawny 
brown camel’s eyes, astute and twinkling. 
Lady Timothy suddenly raised herself 
from the sofa. Her large grey eyes 
were neither astute nor twinkling, but 
they had a certain dull solidity of pur- 
pose. She did not speak, but her son 
addressed himself to her as if answering a 
question. 

“ You want to know what are my inten- 

104 


THE NEW BRANCH 


105 


tions with regard to Zuriel Whistler. So 
far I haven’t any ; I’ve merely desires.” 

“ Aren’t they the same thing, Nick ? ” 

“ Would I be in the diplomatic service if 
they were, Dad ? ” 

Lady Timothy brushed this airy persiflage 
aside with the air of a grown-up dealing with 
littering toys. 

“ Who is her father, Nicholas ? ” 

“ You’ve met her mother.” 

“ You can’t tell an3rthing from mothers 
nowadays.” 

“ Well, he’s retired.” 

Timothy senior struck in grinning. “ How 
far, Nick, and from what ? ” 

“ I believe he was a civil servant.” 

‘‘ Is he dead ? ” 

“No, abroad for his health.” 

“ Then why aren’t his wife and daughter 
with him ? ” 

“ Mrs. Whistler can’t stand the foreign 
cooking, mater.” 

“ Lord ! ” marvelled old Timothy. “ She 
should pay an Italian chef three pounds a 
week to think a boiled egg’s naked and in- 
decent like ours does ” ; his false teeth were 
white and perfect, he flashed them genially 
at his son. “ Well, she’s a lovely girl. I 


io6 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

don’t know when IVe seen a lovelier, and 
she’ll have to be presented at Court. Think 
of that, Mother ! Think of the excitement 
you’ll get out of it ! Smarter than a 
grandchild, old lady, and don’t date you 
so. 

She looked at her husband without resent- 
ment. 

“ You’d welcome anyone into the family 
if they were good-looking.” 

“ I should. Mother. Pedigree looks nice 
on a tombstone, but it isn’t nearly as smart 
as good looks about the house ; and I shan’t 
be here to see the tombstone and no more 
will you.” 

“ I wish,” mourned his wife ; she rose to 
her feet a large, dignified, perfectly corseted 
elderly lady ; “ I wish you wouldn’t be so 
facetious.” 

She paused behind her son’s chair and 
rested a white, perfectly manicured hand 
on his shoulder. “ If you do discover 
you’ve got intentions, Nicholas, you’ll tell 
us?” 

“ Sure I will. Mother, you know that.” 

“She’s remarkable - looking, as long as 
she’s not remarkable in other ways. . . . 
Good night, my dear, good night.” 


THE NEW BRANCH 


107 


He kissed her dutifully, he held the 
door opened for her and noticed appre- 
ciatively how perfectly her white hair was 
dressed ; then he sauntered back and lit a 
cigarette. 

The fire glinted everywhere on things the 
most expensive of their kind, bowls of prim- 
roses and jonquils gave out a faint, elusive 
perfume, but the most glistening thing in 
the room was the merry brown eye Sir 
Timothy cocked at his son. 

“ They’ve all got their foibles, bless ’em ! ” 
he said genially. “ My old woman’s one of 
the best, though she’d have a fit if she heard 
me call her that. If Princess Mary would 
have had you, Nicky, she’d have been pleased 
but not surprised. Prettiness counts more 
than pedigree, my boy, you take my word 
for it. All the people your mother thinks 
worth knowing have been living at Madame 
Tussaud’s for years.” 

Nicholas said ruefully and honestly, “ See 
here, Dad, I don’t know and that’s the truth. 
I can see what you gain by marriage, but I 
can see what a lot you give up.” 

“ Everyone does unless he’s a damned 
fool, Nicky.” 

“ Did you } ” said Nicky. 


io8 THE CUCKOO'S NEST 

The old man smiled and clicked his false 
teeth a little. He bridged the span of years 
between them easily because he had never 
allowed it to grow ; always he was measuring 
it in little unerring, secret, sentimental ways, 
gauging it so that when his son needed him 
he could get across. 

“ Did I ! ” he echoed. “ Did I ! I pro- 
posed to your mother thirty years ago 
because Td chilblains due to under-nourish- 
ment. Marriage cured them anyway. I was 
travelling in vaselines and pomades for 
Withers and Deacons. Her father was a 
chemist at Wigan. Ever been to Wigan ? 
You could do anything there. I saw a good 
bit of her. They’d six daughters all un- 
married. I saw the old boy expected some- 
thing. Your mother was the eldest. She’d 
got a good figure and neck. The next, Ada, 
had filbert nails and a soprano. I liked her, 
but I wouldn’t knuckle under to the death do 
us part bit. I’d decided to hedge off. Well, 
it was a filthy night in January. You don’t 
know Wigan and you don’t know a commer- 
cial room ! There wasn’t a soul to play 
poker with. I went down to the old boy’s. 
It was a hell of a night. They’d got a red 
blind to the parlour window and Ada was 


THE NEW BRANCH 


109 

singing. Anything can look like Heaven in 
Wigan. I stood outside making up my mind 
to beat it . . . and then my chilblains 
started. My feet were swollen with them, 
rd a bunch on the soles of the feet. I can 
remember them now. I went in ! I was as 
dry as bottled sage in front and my back was 
soaking, that’s how the rain slanted. Ada 
was gone by the time I got in, and your 
mother was sitting alone by the fire with her 
neck bent. She’s got a pretty neck now, but 
by Jove in those days it was lovely ! I kissed 
it. I didn’t mean to. It was the red blind 
and the fire and everything. Then she kissed 
me. I lay awake figuring out how many 
clean collars I could have a week, and what 
chance there was of a summer holiday all 
that night. Feelings are muddled up like 
that with most men unless they’ve so little 
money it don’t matter or so much it don’t 
either.” 

He reached out a hand and tapped his 
son’s knee, his eyes were very earnest. 

“ No man can help another man about a 
woman unless he’s disloyal to a woman, son. 
I want you to understand beginnings don’t 
matter in marriage. These chilblains didn’t 
make me love your mother any the less for 


no 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


giving me you, didnT make me grieve any 
the less for her when little Lily died. We’ve 
been married for thirty years and I’ve got a 
sentimental feeling for chilblains now, though 
I’ve never seen one since.” 

Nicholas patted the hand on his knee 
quickly and lightly. 

“ Thanks,” was all he said. “ I’ve an 
idea if she bends her neck . . . but I’ll lie 
awake thinking the hell of a lot too ? ” He 
paused. ‘‘ How did the opening of the 
Balham branch go off ? ” 

“ First rate. We gave ’em pink balloons. 
The place looked grand, pink watered silk 
panels and grey paint. There’s nothing 
like pink for making the middle classes think 
they’re in high life. All the girls in pink and 
pink carnations on the tables. I believe in 
going off with a splash. It means advertise- 
ment. Of course we don’t give ’em their 
money’s worth. We give ’em what they want. 
There’s a few professions, like the medical 
and the police force, that can run on giving 
people what’s good for ’em, but you’ll run 
a business straight into the bankruptcy 
court that way. I give ’em cheap trash. 
Well, that’s what they like ; they wouldn’t 
pay me for it if they didn’t ! I’m honest 


THE NEW BRANCH 


III 


about it, the hot toast is margarine and the 
Swiss roll is stuffed with fruit pulp . . . but 
they lap it up, and if I wasn’t giving it to 
them some other fellow would be. The 
class of girl that comes to the Tiny Tea- 
Tables would sooner eat mud off a pink 
tablecloth than caviare off a marble slab. I 
cater for people’s weaknesses. You can’t 
cure ’em, so you might as well cater for ’em. 
I’m proud of the Tiny Tea-Tables Company. 
I’ve had the Brighton branch all redecorated. 
I wouldn’t have a dirty panel or a bit of 
rubbed paint in my business for anything. 
One of the directors was quite nasty at the 
Board meeting, said it was unnecessary 
expense. I just looked at him. ‘ Sir,’ I 
said, ‘ do you go out in order to feel at 
home ? ’ That had him ! ‘ Neither do my 
customers,’ said I.” 

“ You’re splendid. Dad ! ” 

“ Oh ! I don’t know.” The old man 
paused. “ Whichever way you decide, 
Nicholas, I like her. She’s fair. My little 
Lily was fair. If you ever had a little girl 
. . . They say marriage gives you someone 
to remember happiness with. I don’t know. 
It gives you someone to share regrets with. 
They come oftener and they’re heavier to 


II2 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


carry. I knew a young fool once who was 
always figuring out how he’d save his girl 
from fire and nurse her through illness ; 
when he got married he couldn’t keep his 
feet off the rungs of their new chairs — that’s 
marriage. It’s these novelists and play- 
writers cause all the trouble, making a 
song out of an everyday affair. That’s 
what marriage is, Nicky, an everyday 
affair.” 

“ Yes,” said Nicholas drily. “ That’s just 
what daunts me, old Dad.” 

When he. Sir Terence, went upstairs his 
wife unclosed her eyes. 

“ You’ve been a long time coming to bed, 
dear.” 

“ I had a smoke.” 

“ Did Nicholas have a smoke ? ” 

‘‘ Yes, Nicholas had a smoke.” 

“ Did he talk much ? ” 

“ No, he didn’t talk much,” said old 
Timothy truthfully. 

“ My ! it is funny how you men stick 
together.” 

Old Timothy came and sat rather gingerly 
on the edge of her blue satin eiderdown and 
reached for her hand. 

“ I’d rather he married a fair girl,” he said. 


THE NEW BRANCH 113 

a little inconsequently. “ Their little girl 
would be fair, like our Lily.” 

His wife closed her eyes resignedly. 

“ I knew you’d been talking,” she said. 


X 


FINE FEATHERS 

P oppy whistler wrote the Mar- 

chesa : 

“ Things are waxing fast and furious, 
though to tell the truth I can’t see they’re 
waxing towards anything but a sudden slow 
up when young Timothy’s leave is up, after 
which I shall have to go on living with 
Zuriel ; thafs what worries me. Even if we 
never tell her father, he’ll see by Zuriel some 
sort of an earthquake’s taken place. Men 
aren’t half so blind as would be convenient 
sometimes. The house is still cluttered up 
with people and Zuriel takes as much interest 
in them as if they were groceries. They sit 
and make a three-course dinner off your 
cakes and talk about a lot of dead people and 
dead things, as if they’d all happened 
yesterday. My brain’s so full of worries I 
feel I could choke them sometimes. That 
shows I’m getting nervy. I don’t think 

114 


FINE FEATHERS 


115 

Nicholas wants to marry my girl ; that’s my 
reading of it. That’s breeding ; of course 
you can’t read breeding ; there’s safety in it 
for a man. I’ve never seen a single natural 
emotion struggle through Nicholas Timothy’s 
breeding ; in fact, if I didn’t know different, 
I’d think he was a perfect fool. He’s very 
nice to me, but no nicer than he is to Zuriel, 
which I think is a bad sign. In my young 
days a man gave himself away, and very 
useful it was for mothers. I know mine had 
thanked God for the blessing of having a 
hardware store and being able to take the 
wedding breakfast crockery out of stock, 
before I’d even thought of Whistler as 
Henry. 

“ I can’t say I care much for Lady 
Timothy. She expects your family tree to 
grow out of your mouth, so I keep mine shut. 
I don’t fancy telling her mine started in a 
pudding basin at Bishop’s Stortford. I’ve 
been to a little dance there and to tea once, 
and I admire the way she speaks to her ser- 
vants. I must say that it’s something about 
having a gentleman that you don’t have to be 
always watching how you speak to him, but 
I mustn’t get into the way because of going 
back to Lizzie. Lady Timothy’s been 


ii6 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

fishing to know about Henry. I discovered 
he was supposed to be in Cannes for his 
health. Henry ! whose worst trouble has 
been shingles, and they never met ! I 
gathered that he was supposed to be a retired 
civil servant, so I kept quiet ; I don’t even 
know what a civil servant does, except that 
they go bald early and generally put their 
affairs into the hands of the Public Trustee 
because they die soon after they retire. I’ve 
met a lot of their widows at hotels when 
Zuriel and I travelled. They always have 
little rooms and keep an electric iron hidden 
in the trunk. I don’t wonder fashionable 
people go bankrupt so often. What it costs 
to run this little place, and me doing all the 
cooking, too ! 

“ My goodness, Marchesa,you really ought 
to have a good housekeeper with all your lot 
of maids. I’ve put my foot down. Either 
we go home now or Zuriel stops having 
clothes. She’s clothes mad. I believe she’s 
pawned her seed-pearl necklace to buy stuff. 
I just don’t know what her father would say. 
He’s one of those men who feel almost 
religious about avoiding a pawnbroker and 
a moneylender. Bim and Ann Charlton are 
making her clothes for nothing. Ann was 


FINE FEATHERS 


117 

up till three the other morning sewing a 
green tissue frock in time for Zuriel to wear 
to some countess’s party. Lady Timothy 
chaperoned her. You can’t tell anything 
from Ann’s face either ; she’s got a lot of 
natural breeding, too. I often wonder how 
it will end. It’s fun to you but I’m in it and 
I sometimes think I’m in it for longer than 
I think, and deeper.” 

The Marchesa read it and was delighted. 
She chuckled and her old eyes gleamed. 
She even took a little walk alone and stared 
at the flowers that surrounded her villa and 
touched some with her stick-like fingers as 
if they held hidden magic. Her staff were 
amazed ; it was as if for a moment she had 
been touched with the elixir of youth. They 
watched a smile flicker on her lips. The 
butler summed it up. 

“ She’s living in the past, that’s what it is. 
They do that when they get that old, and 
then you can do anything with them, just 
anything.” 

Zuriel wrote : “ I almost wish with mother 
that we’d never met you and never left the 
bungalow. I promised to tell you in ex- 
change for the loan of this house what I did 
and what I felt. I can’t tell you what I feel. 


ii8 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

I don’t know. I can’t settle to anything. 
I’m not even sleeping. Nicholas Timothy 
comes and goes, and I am always waiting for 
him to come or go and that is my life. I 
don’t feel his mother would welcome me if 
Nicholas did marry, but I don’t think she 
expects him to and I don’t think I expect 
him to either. We are together very often. 
It is terrible, Marchesa, to know so clearly 
what you want and be unable to obtain it. 
Bim Redgold is dear to me. He makes me 
the most wonderful garments. Of course 
I can’t pay him anything, but it seems to 
make him really happy to see me in them and 
I buy the material myself. I pawned my 
seed-pearl necklace and I have since sold 
my pearl brooch. I haven’t dared tell 
mother. I haven’t much jewellery. Father 
didn’t like it ; he hates show. Money soon 
goes in London. Men of Nicholas Timothy’s 
type are so particular about your feet. 
MacAfees of Dover Street are making all my 
shoes ; they’re beautiful, but they cost more 
than I ought to afford, and I have my nails 
manicured twice a week by a very expensive 
girl Lady Timothy recommended me to 
who doesn’t make them very shiny — shininess 
is wrong. Such a lot of things are wrong. 


FINE FEATHERS 119 

Nicholas goes to Copenhagen and then to 
Tahiti for the Government. I don’t quite 
know what for. Oh ! Fd give the world to 
go ! Think of the adventure and the excite- 
ment and the knowledge one would gain, 
Marchesa. All Fve wanted, even my wildest 
dreams, under my hand as it were, and I 
don’t know whether it won’t escape for ever 
beyond my reach. Ann laughs at you. She 
says you like to skin people’s souls as bald 
as bananas and make a meal off them. She 
doesn’t seem to mind making my clothes for 
nothing. I didn’t tell you that six men have 
proposed to me. I hated it. I like the 
restraint of Nicholas. I loathe people who 
let their emotions jump them about. Penn 
Lewis is painting me and Norah Comraiker 
has taken innumerable photographs as a 
Bacchante and a Madonna and all with my 
hair down. If Nicholas Timothy thought 
me beautiful I should begin to appreciate 
myself very much. The photographs are 
to appear in the Sketch, One thing, father 
never looks at illustrated papers, only Punch, 
The Marchesa rang the bell violently ; 
her ancient eyes were gleaming and shining 
and grinning beneath their ancient eaves ; 
there was something bizarre in their drollery 


120 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


and naked gloating, as if venerable lanterns 
had been masked for Carnival. 

“ Order me two copies of tht ^Sketch every 
week,’’ she said. 

“ Now, Madame ? ” 

“ Immediately,” snapped the Marchesa, 
“ and bring me the current issue.” 

In twenty minutes the anxious maid was 
back watching the old lady pounce through 
the pages. When it was ultimately con- 
signed to the waste-paper basket she fished 
it out with care, but there was nothing to 
explain the brilliant patchwork of emotions 
that had lain on her mistress’s face, still less 
explain her enigmatical remark, “ Would you 
like to see a Cuckoo’s Nest, Josephine } ” 

Josephine, black eyes moist with devouring 
curiosity, assured the Marchesa ardently that 
she would. 

“ Naturalists tell us there is no such thing,” 
chuckled the Marchesa. “You are an 
ignorant girl not to know that, but I shall 
see one nevertheless.” 

Eventually she gave Josephine twenty 
francs and a cable addressed to her old 
cousin in Cannes. It read, “ Am sending 
you the English Sketch every week.” 

To the kitchen Josephine explained the 


FINE FEATHERS 


I2I 


phenomena. “It is as if she has found 
suddenly a new interest in life. She is like 
one with a new love.” 

They laughed at her because her Latin 
mind turned naturally to love for similes. 

Stella Redgold wrote. For three hours 
the Marchesa left the letter unopened while 
she dozed. Stella with her rhythmic 
dancing and her small, hard, unclenched 
mind frankly bored her. 

Stella wrote on drawing paper at unusual 
length. 

“ Dear Marchesa, I do find it so difficult 
to keep my promise and write to you. I 
know the others all write the same things 
and much more interestingly. I hate letter- 
writing and I always hated essays worst of 
all at school. Everything goes on here at the 
studio the same. The house looks awfully 
clean. Mrs. Whistler has got a gentleman 
as housemaid. It does seem a shame ; he’s 
a B.A. and everything ! I often see him 
sitting in the kitchen reading most difficult 
books. I talk to him sometimes. I do think 
it’s awfully hard when a man’s fought for 
his country and everything. Of course, 
Bim’s in love with Zuriel Whistler, you 
know, but she’s in love with old Sir Timothy’s 


122 


THE CUCKOOES NEST 


son, Nicholas. She looks too gorgeous for 
anything in the things Bim designs and Ann 
makes. The shop isn’t doing much. Bim 
has just sold a statue he made out of papier 
mache for five pounds. It does seem a pity 
he doesn’t do better when he’s so clever 
and everything. I am going to meet Mr. 
Ferris on his afternoon out, he’s the gentle- 
man who works for Mrs. Whistler. I can’t 
help being sorry for him. I’m not saying 
anything about it ; after all, I don’t see 
whose business it is. You couldn’t meet 
a nicer man. Of course his experiences 
have made him a little humble and a little 
lacking in confidence. He wants bucking 
up. He could go out to an uncle in South 
Africa, who’s got a huge ostrich farm in 
Graaf Reinet and he wants someone to do 
all the books and arrange the business side, 
but Mr. Ferris doesn’t think he’d be suffi- 
ciently good or experienced. That’s just the 
trouble, he doesn’t think half enough of 
himself. His uncle is a bachelor with a 
large house. He’s got a perfect beast of an 
old Dutch housekeeper, but he’s afraid to 
get rid of her because he can’t get anyone 
better. It all seems very sad. We’re going 
to the National Gallery on Wednesday and 


FINE FEATHERS 


123 


then to that nice little tea-shop near the 
something or other theatre ; it doesn’t cost 
much and one can talk. I feel it’s a help 
for him to talk to someone. I don’t want 
you to misunderstand, there’s absolutely 
nothing in it except a natural desire to help 
a fellow human benig. Everybody does 
better if someone believes in them. We’re 
getting a lot of plump old ladies in who 
think rhythmic dancing will reduce their 
hips. Miss Summerthwaite forgot the other 
day and told them to imagine they were a 
row of young poplars swaying in the wind. 
Oh ! it was terrible ! What they really want 
is Swedish exercises in private. They wear 
sandals and Grecian tunics and look like a 
lot of bolsters. It’s terribly depressing. 
Sometimes I wish I’d taken up something 
else, but it is too late now. I don’t think 
Bim is very happy either. Ann Charlton is 
the only happy one, she goes quietly about 
her work, just as she always did. I know 
that Jew with the dozens of shops has been 
after her again. She motored down to see 
his place the other day, it must have been 
awfully nice. He is going to give a pink 
dance. Ann says his home is mostly pink. 
He’s millions of pink geraniums and pink 


124 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


roses and pink curtains, and he’s going to 
have millions of pink fairy lights. It is to 
be for a hospital. He knows quite a lot of 
titled people and people on the stage and they 
like to meet each other. He met Lady 
Timothy and Nicholas the other day. I 
believe she and some big pot at Maidenhead 
are to be the hostesses if it comes off. Of 
course he’ll get a lot of newspaper publicity, 
because he spends thousands on advertising 
with them.” 

The Marchesa clapped her dry, stick-like 
hands and rang the bell. Josephine came, 
running. 

The Marchesa waved one hand towards 
the window and the exquisite blue and gold 
day outside. 

“ Josephine,” she demanded, “ for whom 
was God’s good sunshine ordained ? ” 

“For everyone, Madame,” was Josephine’s 
adroit reply. 

“ I feel like everyone this morning,” said 
the Marchesa. “ Order the car, Josephine, 
and we will enjoy our share.” 


XI 


CONVENTIONS 


N icholas timothy reached for 

the marmalade and surveyed the 
back of The Times that barricaded 
his father. 

His suit was brown, his tie was brown, a 
corn-coloured silk handkerchief tipped his 
coat pocket ; he was fresh, immaculate, 
debonair, his humorous, tawny cameFs eyes 
were wide-awake and brilliant. 

“ Why hasn’t the mater shown up these 
last two mornings ? ” 

“ She’s worried.” 

“ About the pink dance,” Nicholas 
chuckled. “ That man’s flair for advertise- 
ment is simply magnificent. What’s he 
trying for, a title } ” 

“ I think he’d refuse it loudly in every 
newspaper in London.” 

“ Well, what’s the mater’s trouble ? ” 

“ She’s waiting and wondering.” 

125 


126 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


‘‘ Well/’ said Nicholas, “ so am I,” and 
went on eating marmalade. 

“ Your mother found a Henry J. Whistler 
in the list of retired civil servants. He’s 
been retired a good many years.” 

‘‘ That so ? ” said Nicholas. 

The old man laid down his newspaper. 

“ See here, Nicky,” he said, “ life’s hard 
on a mother with an only son ; over and over 
again she’s got to learn he’s a man and be 
surprised and hurt at it.” 

“ I feel so damned inadequate,” said Nick 
ruefully. 

“ She really didn’t sleep last night,” said 
Sir Timothy. 

“ I haven’t got a thing to tell her.” 

“ They don’t mind that a bit so long as 
you talk to them,” his father assured him 
cheerfully. 

Nicholas got up and strolled to the window, 
he stood looking through the yellow net 
curtains at the empty, sun-swept street. 
His father surveyed his square, brown- 
covered shoulders, his brown head with 
affectionate pride. 

“ It’s so difficult to know what to say to 
her.” 

“ She’ll say it for you. They always do 


CONVENTIONS 


127 


if you’re not quick enough to please them. 
Between ourselves, Nicky, she’s bitterly dis- 
appointed. She’d looked higher for you. 
She’ll try not to show it ; it’ll come out, but 
you mustn’t mind. She feels you’re shutting 
her out.” 

“ I know,” said Nicky. 

“ There never was a husband who didn’t 
fail as a husband, or a son who didn’t fail as 
a son, since the relationship began,” said 
Sir Timothy. “ You see they have to 
behave according to the secret and unknown 
tradition that exists in the minds of women. 
You catch glimpses of it sometimes too in 
novels by women and it appals you by its 
impossibility.” 

“ Then I ought to go and murmur at 
twilight by her blue eiderdown,” grinned 
Nicholas ruefully. 

“ That’s rather the idea,” said his father. 

“ And the awful part of it that all I’ve got 
to say can be said by the pitiless light 
day.” 

“ Quite.” 

“ Did you know she’s chaperoning Zuriel 
to Isaacs’s Pink Dance ? ” 

“ Yes, she told me.” 

“ Isaacs is clever. He knows men detest 


128 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


fancy dress. Men in white flannels and the 
girls in fancy dress. Tickets three guineas. 
They Ve got a notice twenty feet long outside 
the hospital and they’re selling tickets at 
Keith Prowse and all the big stores. Zuriel 
won’t tell me what she’s going as and she 
won’t drive down with us. She says she 
doesn’t know whether she’s going at all.” 

‘‘ I wonder how many thousands it’ll cost 
our friend Isaacs ? ” 

‘‘ He’s clever enough not to count them.” 
Nicholas sighed. “ I wish I were the sort 
of fellow to be lifted off my feet. I suppose 
they’re too big or something.” 

He went up to his mother’s bedroom. 

He found her with the efficient secretary 
she had acquired to deal with the Pink Dance. 
At a nod and smile from her the young 
woman went away. Nicholas took her place 
and looked down at the blue eiderdown. 

‘‘ I know,” he said without beating about 
the bush, ‘‘ you’ve been waiting for me to 
tell you whether I’m engaged to Zuriel 
Whistler.” 

“ We’ve always been good friends, Nicky, 
not like some mothers and sons.” 

He looked at her ruefully ; that was how 
he had always found it all his life with 


CONVENTIONS 


129 


women who cared ; when you spoke to 
them of the future they immediately looked 
back into the past ; for a man the two have 
no connection. Then they obscured one’s 
clearness of vision by little wistful, irrelevant 
comparisons that had the effect of making 
one feel an inconsiderate brute. 

‘‘I’m not engaged,” said Nicky baldly. 

“ But you feel . . 

“ I feel a whole lot of things,” said Nicky, 
“ but then I have before.” 

A sudden feeling of hopelessness came to 
him, of painful inadequacy. That handsome, 
well-preserved, autocratic old lady lying there 
in the blue crepe de Chine dressing -jacket 
was his mother and he, the young man, was 
her son. He could not leap the years that 
lay between them ; he tried to do so by 
insistence on their relationship. 

“ You’ve been a topping mother to me,” 
he said. “ You mustn’t think I don’t know 
that. One does not always say what one 
feels ” — ^he stopped, because he realised he 
was not feeling what he was saying, so many, 
many years he had been away and all the 
while it was not only he who was growing 
up, but she also. Why did one think of 
mothers as stationary, only to find that when 


130 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


one came to look for them in their own 
familiar place they had moved ? 

“ I am trying to be honest, but it’s damned 
hard,” said Nicky. “ The hardest thing I 
ever did, because I’m letting people down 
over it. I’m not behaving as you have a 
right to expect, or Zuriel. She appeals to 
me tremendously. I think her beautiful. 
It’s a bad luck you can never be honest 
in personal relationships without being an 
infernal cad. I am in love with Zuriel 
Whistler, Mother, but marriage has always 
seemed to me such a long business. I get 
so tired of things that last a long time. I’m 
not always thinking of myself, I swear. I’d 
be unbearable, however hard I tried, if I had 
to go on with a thing after I was sick and 
tired of it.” 

“ By that time you’d be so used to it that 
you wouldn’t question it,” said his mother. 

He looked at her. She was smiling at 
him, her grey eyes, so unlike his own, were 
soft and amused. He realised that up till 
then he had been throwing his words doggedly 
like a man throws crumbs into the snow for 
starving but invisible birds ; now he had 
the rather unexpected satisfaction of seeing 
them picked up and appreciated*. 


CONVENTIONS 


131 

“ Nobody who isn’t married would ever 
believe how natural it all seems after a week 
or two,” she said. “ That’s the funny part 
of it. You won’t mind my saying it, dear 
boy,” her pleasant voice was a little chagrined, 
“ but I would have been pleased if it had been 
someone a little more . . . important. Of 
course the Civil Service is very respectable, 
but it’s very, very ordinary, and then Mrs. 
Whistler, well . . . she’s a nice little body, 
but I shouldn’t say ...” 

“ No,” said Nicholas, “ I quite see what 
you mean. Mother, but in any case my 
wife wouldn’t see much of her people. 
We should live abroad. Personally I like 
Mrs. Whistler very much ; she amuses me 
tremendously.” 

“ Zuriel could behave exactly as she 
likes,” said Lady Timothy, with a sudden 
flash of insight, “ because she doesn’t con- 
form to any type. A girl is very lucky to be 
born like that. It leaves her so nice and free. 
You never seemed to care for quite ordinary 
things, Nicky, even when you were quite a 
little boy. It used to worry me dreadfully. 
I’ve often cried about it to your father. 
When we used to take you to the toy- 
shop to choose something at Christmas 


132 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


you’d always dig something odd out of the 
corner.” 

“ And you were afraid Fd dig something 
out of the corner matrimonially.” 

“ Oh ! I was. That’s why the Civil 
Service has been a relief to me, though it’s 
a disappointment in a way. Your father’s 
been nervous, too.” 

“Dad? Rubbish!” 

“ He wouldn’t have liked trade. He’d 
have hated it, Nicky. I know when Laura 
Kenlock, that sewing-machine millionairess, 
used to come here he used to worry.” 

“ But he always sticks up for anyone in 
trade. He’s so fiery about it.” 

“ Of course he is ; that’s a man all over. 
If you’d married into trade it would have 
been a bitterer blow to him than to me.” 
She patted his hand with her perfectly 
manicured one. “ Now don’t you worry, 
dear boy, or analyse your feelings ; it’s a 
shocking waste of time. Just you wait for 
the moment.” She touched the bell. “That 
Pink Dance is worrying me to death. I wish 
I’d never touched it.” 

Nicholas Timothy’s attractive camel’s eyes 
wandered all round the luxurious blue and 
white silk-panelled walls, and over the white 


CONVENTIONS 


133 


bear rugs. His eyes lingered on a bowl 
of love-in-the-mist on the dressing-table. 

“ The moment ? ” he repeated uncer- 
tainly. 

The secretary came in and stood quietly 
waiting ; Lady Timothy motioned her to 
be seated and smiled at her tall son. 

“ The moment/’ she repeated reassuringly. 


XII 


BREAKING-POINT 

P oppy whistler wrote to the 

Marchesa : 

“ Here we are dingle-dangling on. 
The day I went down to see if the gardener 
was doing his duty by the garden was the 
happiest IVe had for a long time. 

“ I don’t know what we’re dingle-dangling 
for either. I wake up with a horrible feeling 
every morning, as if it’s the day fixed for the 
dentist. 

“I’m down to my last ten pounds and 
that’s the honest truth. If you asked me to 
believe it has cost what it has and me doing 
the cooking I couldrCt have believed you. 

“ After Mr. Isaacs’s Pink Dance at Maiden- 
head I’m going home, with or without 
Zuriel. 

“You must have seen about it in the 
papers. How the editors can spare him all 
that space with the interesting divorces and 
134 


BREAKING-POINT 


135 


bits of trouble there are everywhere, I don’t 
know, I’m sure. 

“I’m terribly, terribly worried. Whatever 
happens to Zuriel she’ll never be the same 
again ; she’s not the same. I wish to 
goodness I’d been firm and never left my 
home. It was the silliest thing I ever did in 
my life. 

“ I find Bim a great comfort. I never 
knew a more understanding man ; you can 
talk to him as if he wasn’t a man. 

“ Zuriel wants a pink dress for this dance. 
She wants me to pawn my ruby ring. I 
don’t say I’d sooner die, but I’d sooner go 
home. You get like the thing you live with ; 
that’s why some women shouldn’t live with 
Pekinese and chows. There’s one woman 
who comes here, paints miniatures ; she’s 
perfect but for the fur ; anyway. I’ve 
acquired Henry’s views on pawnbrokers. 
I don’t think my knees would ever take 
me into Attenborough’s and that’s the 
truth. 

“ Henry writes that he might be home a 
bit earlier than he expected. It was a lovely 
letter. I felt him looking up to me all the 
time in it. I wrote and told him we might 
go away for a bit. 


136 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ One thing Fve got Zuriel to promise— 
she’ll come away after the dance. I don’t 
know what she’ll do for a dress. I’m going 
to keep my ring. I’d give her anything of 
mine, but I won’t give her a bit of Henry, 
and that’s what my jewellery is. 

“ I shall tell Henry everything when he 
comes back ; I’ve made up my mind to that. 
The more angry he is the better I shall feel. 

‘‘ I am perfectly certain Nicholas Timothy 
isn’t going to marry Zuriel ; to begin with 
he’s not a domesticated man ; he’s one of 
those who’d let the fire go out under his nose 
and leave the electric on all night. I can’t 
say I’m sorry, it would have been a terrible 
blow to Henry, holding the strong views he 
does about the Tiny Tea-Tables, Limited. 
Henry says they’re immoral. He means the 
food, not the way they’re managed. Henry’s 
one of those men that feels every real new- 
laid egg comes straight from God. 

“ Zuriel means to have a dress for the 
Maidenhead affair. I don’t know what she’ll 
do. I haven’t seen her seed-pearls lately or 
her pearl brooch, but I daren’t ask in case 
I get the truth. I’d rather not know it. 

“ The man who said no mother knew her 
daughter after she was two was no fool. I 


BREAKING-POINT 


137 


can no more believe Zuriel’s the girl who 
used to go down to Margate with me and have 
a cake at Bobby’s and a look at the people 
and the shops than I can fly. 

“ Zuriel tells me that Lady Timothy has 
found a Henry Whistler in the Civil Service 
lists. She’s welcome. I don’t suppose it’ll 
ever come to anything. I hope not. It 
haunts me. Now that woman is a snob. If 
a woman’s really good class you like her to 
be a snob and the more snobby she is the 
more pleased you are at her knowing you, 
but considering who Sir Terence Timothy is 
and how he made his pile I’ve no patience 
with it. I don’t think she wants Zuriel in 
the family, but she feels better about it 
since she thought she found poor Henry’s 
profession. 

“ I think Stella Redgold is in love with 
my manservant. I told you he was a B.A. 
and all the rest of it. She’s got a lot of 
books by Gertrude Page and she’s reading 
them all day. I love her books, but they’re 
no true guide ; all those people put in the 
sunsets and leave out the washing up. As 
far as I can make out life’s mostly washing 
up in those parts ; the more successful your 
husband gets the more farm hands he has 


138 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

and the more washing up there is. You own 
millions of acres and live at the sink. Stella’s 
got hands that get all pappy with water, 
too, but, as I said before, the young hate 
common sense. She read me a bit the other 
day with tears in her eyes, all lonely horizons 
and things ; I hadn’t the heart to point out 
it wasn’t any fun having a baby in a landscape 
like that.” 

After she had finished writing this Poppy 
went up to Zuriel’s bedroom ; the moonlight 
came through the curtains and made a white 
shining jazz pattern in the black room. 
Zuriel lay in a gleaming pool of light in the 
queer little carved and canopied bed. Her 
hair was loose and shining, too ; as she lay 
there she seemed to be floating. Struggling 
as usual with a sense of unreality Mrs. 
Whistler perched on the edge of the bed and 
sat there in the shadow like an unquiet 
pouter pigeon. 

“ Zuriel,” she said baldly, “ do you think 
you’ll get Nicholas Timothy ? ” 

The whiteness and the blackness and the 
shining hair and Zuriel’s enigmatical face 
floating on it like a mask on water. The 
poor little woman had a sudden stinging 
sense of coarseness, of crudeness. It was 


BREAKING-POINT 


139 


as if she had cried aloud the price of Cin- 
derella’s shoe, as if she stood unexpectedly 
in a harlequinade, not knowing her cue, 
only the grotesque inadequacy of her own 
commonplaceness . 

“ I mean it can’t go on,” she said quiver- 
ingly. “ It’s breaking me up, and now your 
father talks of coming home. It’s altogether 
too much. Live on credit I won’t ; it’s 
like living on charity. Where are your 
pearls ? ” 

“ Pawned,” said Zuriel. 

“ And your brooch ? ” 

“ Sold,” said Zuriel. 

Mrs. Whistler made queer little clucking 
noises with her tongue. 

“ That things should come to such a pass,” 
she said. 

The scent of white jasmine crept through 
the window ; through the curtains gleamed 
the stars. She gazed up at them with the 
intentness of one who sees a friendly face in 
alien surroundings. 

“ We could go home to-morrow morning,” 
she whispered. “ Just send a telegram to 
Lizzie and pack up and go.” 

“ Would you like to run away and leave 
the most important thing in your life un- 


140 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


finished ? Elnow all your life that you’d left 
it unfinished ? ” 

“ How you do put things ! ” said her 
mother. 

“ I put things as they are,” said Zuriel. 
“ I want to wait for the Pink Dance. After 
that ril go home. You talk as if things had 
crashed. Nothing’s even happened.” 

“ Sometimes that’s worse to bear ! Oh ! 
we seem to have been up here years and years. 
Henry will wonder why the blankets smell of 
camphor. I can’t possibly give you a pink 
fancy dress, Zuriel. If you like to make a 
paper one ...” 

‘‘ I am going to ask Bim Redgold,” said 
Zuriel. 

Mrs. Whistler rose to her feet and stood 
looking down at her daughter. Strange and 
fantastic thoughts flashed through her mind, 
so that she was bewildered ; it was like 
lightning playing over surroundings that 
had always been familiar and sunlit. She 
did not know how to take her bearings. It 
seemed to her that Zuriel was an idol. She 
saw that they all served her beauty, Bim, 
Ann, the Marchesa, Stella, and she used 
them all, gracefully, charmingly, making it 
seem a privilege. 


BREAKING-POINT 141 

Zuriel smiled — it was a wonderful smile ; 
it woke her out of her silver- white remoteness 
to radiant life. 

“ Kiss me good night, honey,’’ she said ; 
“ I’m so tired.” 

Mrs. Whistler said heavily, “ Why do you 
all grow up ? Why do you ? ” and Zuriel 
answered : 

“ Because we want to live, too.” 


XIII 


THE INCENSE AND THE IDOL 

B IM red gold saw Zuriel by deliber- 
ately ignoring the actuality and con- 
centrating on her reflexion in his own 
idealism ; Stella saw her as something un- 
believably pretty and gay, a domestic butterfly 
of hitherto unknown species ; Ann Charlton 
alone perceived the rankness and crudeness 
of her egotism, the immovable soil from 
which her witcheries and spells reared 
themselves. 

In common fairness she acknowledged 
that Zuriel did not ask half what the people 
around her were prepared to give. She 
accepted with the impersonal joyousness and 
un-selfconsciousness of a baby ; it was that 
that made it so impossible to dislike her 
altogether, that and her appealing loveliness. 

She seemed as incapable of visioning or 
feeling the self-sacrifice she demanded as a 
young child who unconsciously takes its 
142 


THE INCENSE AND THE IDOL 143 

mother’s last crumb, but she was sustained 
by the firm conviction that she would 
ultimately be able to pay back everything 
in kind. 

‘‘ Even if I don’t marry Nicholas Timothy, 
I can pay you and Bim back out of my dress 
allowance when father comes back from 
Cannes ; you’ll only have to wait a bit,” 
she said to Ann. “ And I’ll never, never 
forget.” 

“ You don’t remember now,” said Ann, 
smiling. 

“ Suppose you wanted something, wouldn’t 
you try and take it ? ” 

“ No,” said Ann ; “ I’d wait for it to 
come to me. Even when I knew it had quite 
gone I’d still be waiting.” 

“ Well, wouldn’t that be silly ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Ann, “ it would.” 

“ But if you knew it was ! ” 

“ Sometimes it’s so much easier to go on 
being silly.” 

The two girls sat in the studio waiting for 
Bim. Great sheaves of lilac, for which no 
vases had been empty in the house, gave out 
a rich perfume. The little garden was dim 
with summer twilight ; beyond it stretched 
the dim shrouded immensity of London 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


144. 

already pricking out its familiar contours 
with primrose pin-points of light. 

“ Why aren’t you going to this Pink Dance 
too, Miss Charlton ? I thought you knew 
Mr. Isaacs ? ” 

“ Not in that way,” said Ann without 
resentment. “ Mr. Isaacs knows different 
people in different ways. Jews do.” 

“ Bim isn’t going either.” 

“ We don’t dance,” said Ann ; the little 
pronoun crept over her consciousness like 
sunlight. 

“ I found a wonderful fancy dress in an 
old book of the Marchesa’s,” said Zuriel 
suddenly. “ With the most wonderful head- 
dress. It was all made of those big pearl 
beads — ^you can get them in pink, you know, 
Ann — a lovely pink, like firelight ; they’re 
about fourpence each. The skirt is just 
strands of pink ribbon and strands of pearls 
over them. . . . That’s what I’ve come to 
see Bim about. I’ve got the illustration here. 
I should wear my hair down. You would, 
wouldn’t you ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Ann, “ if I had your hair.” 
Her voice sounded dry and reedy. 

Footsteps came and went on the other side 
of the high wall, ghost footsteps in a world 


THE INCENSE AND THE IDOL 145 

too remote to matter ; by and by stars would 
glimmer and the feet of the people she heard 
would carry them backwards and forwards 
beneath them, but she and the girl would be 
apart in this little dark studio that shut out 
all stars, two of them waiting for a man who 
would only see one of them. She had a 
sudden desire to speak large, harsh ugly 
truths to Zuriel. Things she couldn’t get 
away from or airily ignore. To tell her Bim 
had no money for frocks or pink pearls. To 
shoot at her the plain, stark questions she 
had come to ask Bim, the questions that had 
to be asked and somehow answered. 

“ I don’t think Bim has the money,” she 
said, and Zuriel answered easily, confidently. 
“ He said he’d help me, and this is the 
last thing I shall want.” 

“ I came here to see Bim because ...” 

“ I won’t keep him long,” said Zuriel 
lightly. 

It was as if she raised a little silver 
gossamer veil between herself and the things 
she did not want to know and Ann Charlton, 
who dwelt amid realities, and was over- 
burdened with them at the moment, dared 
not rend it, because her own simplicity 
understood neither its texture nor its actual 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


146 

purpose. What use to tell her she and Bim 
had no money for necessities let alone 
luxuries, that she was there to tell him that 
the little shop where their artistic dreams 
had died stillborn must be closed. Zuriel, 
gifted by the gods in that particular, would 
only see what she desired, not what others 
lacked. 

Her love ran turgidly in her, her mind was 
dark and heavy with its load in the little 
room enmeshed in twilight, shut in with 
this yellow-haired idol that she must watch 
Bim worship with blind eyes. The scent of 
the lilac, overpoweringly sweet, seemed like 
incense. 

“ If Bim had capital and could start else- 
where he could do awfully well,” said Zuriel. 
“ He has real talent.” 

“ Yes.” Ann’s voice was arid. 

“ Of course he makes a mistake to ignore 
money.” 

“ One can’t ignore money if it ignores 
you,” said Ann ; “ that isn’t possible. You 
can only try to pretend.” 

‘‘ I suppose Stella will go out to South 
Africa with mother’s butler when we leave 
... I put it like that because it amuses me 
so. Of course he’s quite a gentleman. It’s 


THE INCENSE AND THE IDOL 147 

a good thing, really ; there can’t be much 
future in rhythmic dancing. If our coming 
has done nothing else weVe helped Bim. 
He won’t have his sister to bother about ; 
apparently the old uncle has a lovely home 
and will leave it to them when he dies. It’s 
all rather like a fairy tale. I think life is. 
Fancy ! Stella in South Africa because of 
us.” 

Ann sat motionless. People coming and 
going . . . coming and going, the weaving 
of life before her eyes. She put her hand in 
her pocket and clutched her last pound note. 
No stock, no orders, no future, nothing but 
an unpaid rent and a pound note. There 
had been joy in the chequered road they 
had travelled towards a fascinating but un- 
named destination ; there had been the joy 
of companionship, the exhilaration of shared 
laughter, the zest of shared success and 
failure robbed of its sting. She looked back 
at happiness with the piteous hopelessness 
of age looking back at youth — the last pound 
note and the end of the road. Not finality, 
not drama, just a dull plodding on some- 
where and somehow in whatever lay beyond. 

“ Mother’s worried to death,” said Zuriel. 
“ She fidgets me. All day long she’s rubbing 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


148 

silver and brass, and doesn’t seem happy 
unless she’s rubbing. Money has nearly 
given out and father’s coining home soon. 
Nothing has happened. I keep telling her 
that. We haven’t spent any more money 
than he gave us to spend or broken any actual 
laws he laid down. She’s in a stew. I wish 
I could help her. I can’t help her, because 
I can’t see father as her husband, only my 
father, and I can’t see anything to be afraid 
of in him. She isn’t exactly afraid either, 
it’s as if she doesn’t want to tell him she’s 
broken something, though she knows it’s 
half his. He’ll have to tell us what he is, 
because I’ll have to tell Nicholas if anything 
comes of all this. They think he’s a retired 
civil servant. It’s funny when you get away 
from a person how clearly you see things. I 
simply cannot think what prevented me from 
asking father outright what he was before, 
yet there was something or I should have 
done it.” 

“ Yes,” said Ann vaguely. 

“ Then again,” said Zuriel, “ is there 
anything more absolutely personal, more 
individual, than marriage ? Mother says 
she’ll never dare tell Daddy I’m marrying 
the son of Sir Terence Timothy. Well, I 


THE INCENSE AND THE IDOL 149 

dare ! You don’t belong to your parents 
when you’re old enough to belong to yourself. 
She knows that. She agrees with me.” 

“ Yes,” said Ann, unheeding. 

“ Stella and her young man have gone to 
the theatre,” said Zuriel suddenly. ‘‘ They’ll 
hold hands. It’s funny, I would never 
think of Nicholas as my young man and I 
should never want to hold hands, yet I love 
theatres and I should be glad to be with him, 
probably just as glad as Stella.” She gave 
her quick, fascinating smile. “ I am like 
that.” 

Ann noticed neither her absorbed in- 
looking nor her smile, she was looking 
forward, listening eagerly to the velvet 
footsteps that passed on the other side of 
the wall ; they all sounded the same. 

“ I wonder if Bim will ever make a big 
artistic success.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Ann. 

In the darkness Ann shut her eyes and 
tried to shut her mind, to see only the last 
pound note and the reasons and arguments 
she had carefully marshalled for Bim’s 
inspection on the way up. For days he had 
not been near the little shop and she had 
sat with idle hands and a last roll of grey 


150 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


silk in the window. Someone had bought 
the grey silk. They did not want it made 
up, a fashion paper was under their arm. 
Ann had sold it for a pound, and still tarried 
because she had only bad news to take and 
dreaded the burden because she must pass 
it over without lightening herself. She would 
gladly have carried it in secret. 

“ I wish Bim would come,’’ said Zuriel. 
“ I want to get back to mother. She 
doesn’t like being left alone. She thinks 
too much.” 

“ I expect he’ll come,” said Ann. 

“ I know a shop where you can get those 
pink pearls ; they’re as large as small 
cherries.” 

“ And fourpence each ? ” said Ann. 
“ Why ! you’d want thousands.” 

“ Well, hundreds,” said Zuriel. “ But, 
Ann, it’ll be the most marvellous dress and 
a wonderful advertisement for Bim ; of 
course he’ll have to alter it, there’s only the 
bare idea on the sketch.” 

“ I don’t see how it can be managed.” 

“ Bim will manage it,” said Zuriel. “ He 
promised.” 

Ann clutched her pound note. She had 
a feeling of being shut in for all eternity 


THE INCENSE AND THE IDOL 151 

with the incense and the idol. She struggled, 
as other people struggled, and poor Mrs. 
Whistler most of all, to establish contact 
with actuality. Her body was hot, it seemed 
almost that her mind was hot like a thing 
that has been suddenly spun into friction. 

“ It’ll be my last public appearance,” said 
Zuriel. “ Cinderella will have to go back 
to the kitchen if it doesn’t come off. That 
never happened in the fairy tale.” 

‘‘ Perhaps,” said Ann, “ when they wrote 
it, they thought of all the other things 
Cinderella called into being . . . the rats 
that became horses, the pumpkin that became 
a golden carriage. I wonder if they all 
liked going back to just where they were.” 

“ They’d never have been anything else if 
it hadn’t been for Cinderella,” said Zuriel. 
“ It’s only fair to remember that.” 

Ann thought that Zuriel, though actual, 
was hard to believe. 

Bim came swinging up the little path, 
whistling. He seemed to Ann to break up 
the bleakness ; he had the air of bringing 
some of the stars in with him and the silken 
frou-frouing of the summer wind. 

“ Why ! Mistress Zuriel ! ” he said, “ I 
thought you would be out somewhere 


152 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


dancing in the dawn or something. Here you 
are and Mistress Ann, too ! I walked over 
Westminster Bridge and felt I owned the 
world. One day 111 paint it, lights and all, 
so that ratepayers coming to see it by daylight 
at the National Gallery (you perceive I aim 
high) shall be angry because the lights are 
not put out. Well, how’s everybody and 
everything ? ” 

Zuriel came to the point with the directness 
of a kingfisher after a fly. She thrust the 
illustration into his hand. 

“For the Pink Dance ! ” she said. “ Now, 
Bim, you just look ! ” 

“ For you } ” said Bim. 

“For me,” echoed Zuriel, and her voice 
lilted. 

“ My dear,” said Bim simply, “ I don’t 
see how we can do it.” 

“ Itll cost money,” said Ann. 

Bim looked at Zuriel. “ Have you any ? ” 
he asked starkly. 

Zuriel switched on the electric light with 
an impatient hand. She was brilliant with 
excitement, she seemed to glow and gleam 
and shine with it, her velvety eyes, her 
silvery hair. Her dress was something Bim 
had designed, formless, the colour of a 


THE INCENSE AND THE IDOL 153 

peacock’s neck, sheathing her weird bril- 
liance in exoticism that seemed natural to 
her. 

“ Oh, listen ! ” she said. ‘‘ You promised. 
Oh ! Bim, I feel things will come right that 
night.” She spun round on Ann — “ I know 
quite what you’re thinking sitting there so 
quietly, you’re thinking horrid things of me, 
that I’m a parasite . . . that I’m a doll. 
It’s all how you look at things. You wouldn’t 
send a woman to prison if you could save 
her by making her a dress . . . you wouldn’t 
send her to prison for a month, but you’re 
sending me to prison in Margate and you 
could save me ! You could ! I’m not 
asking you to give me anything. I’m only 
asking you to lend me something.” 

‘‘ We haven’t it to lend,” said Ann 
stolidly. 

“ Very well,” said Zuriel. 

She rose forlornly and trailed towards the 
door. 

‘‘ Ann,” said Bim, “ couldn’t we manage 
it ? ” 

She looked at it, she saw the eagerness and 
the anxiety in his eyes, the creases on his 
forehead. 

She saw that Zuriel Whistler had brought 


154 


THE CUCKOOES NEST 


something into his life just by being in it, 
that she had created in him the desire 
to serve the beautiful in art that she em- 
bodied. 

“ No,’’ said Ann. 

Zuriel looked at her and went quietly 
away. 


XIV 


BIM PROPOSES 

O NE feels/’ said Bim, “ that it is 
churlish not to assist a princess 
to her prince and her kingdom 
round the corner. One feels that, Ann.” 

“ Does one ? ” said Ann. 

“ Zuriel’s right when she says life lasts a 
long time,” said Bim. 

“ It lasts for other people too, not only 
for her,” said Ann. 

“ She’s honest about wanting things,” said 
Bim. “ I’ve never known anyone so utterly, 
so nakedly honest. The rest of us go about 
hugging our little secret desires, never 
mentioning them ; but she calls high Heaven 
to bear witness to hers.” 

“ She does,” said Ann. 

“ I don’t know what there is about 
her . . .” 

“ There’s hair and eyes,” said Ann, “ and 
her voice, and her tiny pointed hands and 
155 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


156 

feet, and the way her mouth turns up and 
the redness of it ; it doesn’t much matter 
what else there is, does it ? ” 

“ The Marchesa wouldn’t only see those 
things.” 

“ The Marchesa saw a joke. I haven’t 
discovered it yet, but it will be there and the 
Marchesa will crack it with the more relish 
because of our blindness. I perceive that 
too.” 

Bim sat down on the divan and clasped 
his hands round his knee, his shag of tobacco- 
coloured hair stood upright ; he bent his 
puzzled eyes on Ann, square and sturdy and 
sane, and she met his eyes with her own dark, 
far-seeing ones. 

“ I found out something to-day, Ann,” he 
said. “I’m growing old, too old for star- 
chasing and moon-raking, and some of my 
best dreams are past work, old Ann. I’ve 
been flying hither and thither while other 
men walked soberly to marked destinations 
and real goals, and now my wings are moult- 
ing and I don’t know how to walk soberly 
and with decent mien. I’ve carved a bit 
and I’ve painted a bit. I’ve designed dresses. 
I’ve run a shop. I’ve published poems and 
even had them acclaimed . . . but it’s made 


BIM PROPOSES 


157 


a sort of fretwork round myself and obscured 
the big things of life. If I knew what the 
big things of life were I’d go after them. 
What are they ? ” 

“ Sometimes,” said Ann, “ they’re the 
things you don’t want to do.” 

She seemed to sit with hands clasped in 
the ineffable mellowness of understanding ; 
she knew that he did not know she was 
mentally there beside him. 

“ I’ve been titivating life,” said he. “A 
little while ago it began to seem rather a 
useless dissipation ; to-night it seems a 
crime against time. Ann, I want to make 
this dress for Zuriel Whistler. I’ve a 
superstitious feeling about it. I’ve a queer 
feeling it may be the beginning of things for 
me as well as for her. Odd how these things 
get hold of one. I want it more than I want 
anything ; and I haven’t a sou or a thing to 
sell. Can you help me ? ” 

“ How much would it cost ? ” 

“ I’m afraid a lot,” said Bim ruefully. 
“ I’ve never been in a blind alley before. I 
don’t like it. I think I’ve been there a long 
time, dreaming the hills and plains and the 
world lay beyond whenever I cared to move, 
and not really bothering to move. It’s odd 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


158 

how I feel that, helping Zuriel Whistler, 
Ann ! I want to for her sake, and I want to 
for my own sake. IVe an idea it spells 
deliverance for both of us, for her and me. 
It may be the gate for both of us. Imagine 
her going back to that bungalow with her 
mother — back to that life of silk matching 
and cushion covering and theatres.’’ 

“ One supposes that Nicholas Timothy 
will be carried off his feet at the Pink Dance.” 

“ Can you imagine Zuriel dressed for 
conquest mentally and physically, primed 
with the unbounded zest of the last chance 
and remaining unconquering. Her atmo- 
sphere, her mood, her charm will be irresist- 
ible.” 

“ Perhaps,” said Ann. 

“ She can’t go unless we help her.” 

“ No,” said Ann. 

“ I shouldn’t think anybody has ever had 
their earthly paradise mapped out with the 
exactitude and neatness Zuriel has. It’s 
masterly. She’s even left little spaces for 
the emotions and I honestly believe when 
they grow they’ll fit in. There are no 
glorious, untidy horizons either. She does 
not want to go any further than she can see 
or see any further than she can go. She’s 


BIM PROPOSES 


159 


born without that insatiable longing for the 
thing hidden round the corner, that taste for 
the next bend and the bend beyond that,” 
he smiled. “ I feel it a duty to posterity to 
help her. Her type almost dispenses with 
the eternal and pathetic human need of an 
ultimate heaven. Ann, how much would 
that dress cost ? ” 

“ Forty or fifty pounds,” cautioned Ann 
bleakly. 

“ I want to make it more than anything. 
Ann — have you anything to suggest ? I have 
to manage it somehow.” 

Ann looked at him. Her eyes were soft 
and bright, the sudden sweetness of her smile 
flashed at him. 

“ It’s all right, Bim,” she said. “ I have 
an idea Fll tell you to-morrow.” 

“ Have you,” said Bim, “ ever had the 
feeling that you’d like to give someone the 
whole world as a present ? ” He grinned at 
her. “ Of course,” he admitted, “ it would 
be a little difficult to wrap up. You’d be 
sure to think of that.” 

Ann looked away from him. “ I have,” 
she vouchsafed quietly. 

They saw Zuriel running down the garden. 
She burst in upon them. Her queer faun’s 


i6o THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

eyes were brilliant with tears. She flung 
out her arms with a little gesture of despera- 
tion and abandon. 

‘‘ Mother’s had a letter from father,” she 
wailed. “ He’s coming home the day after 
the dance. She’s going home. She says she 
must have two days to air the bungalow and 
put up clean curtains. Can’t you . . . can’t 
you just go and talk to her, Ann ? ” 

“ What could I say ? ” said Ann. “ Besides 
I’m not good at talking.” 

“ Oh, Bim, you ! ” 

“ I’ll try,” said Bim. “ You stay here.” 


XV 


AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL 

P oppy whistler sat crocheting 

fiercely. Spots of colour burnt 
furiously in her cheeks, her eyes 
seemed darker and harder ; she was like an 
old-fashioned, pleasant, rather too highly 
coloured little Dutch doll of the old type. 

“ Young man,’’ she said to Bim, “ you 
can talk and talk. I knew just where Zuriel 
had gone when she flew out of the room. 
Cuckoo’s Nest or mare’s nest, this is where 
we get out of it. My mind’s made up and 
when it’s made up it’s made up, and that’s 
that.” 

Bim sat down wordlessly at the piano and 
began to play. 

“You can stop that,” Poppy warned him 
irately. “ If that’s meant to soften me it’ll 
have about as much effect as a handful of 
oatmeal in a chalk pit. My mind’s made up. 
Home we go to the bungalow to make things 

i6i 


M 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


162 

spick-and-span for Henry. I haven’t done 
my duty by Henry.” 

“ Or Zuriel,” said Bim. 

“ If any woman could see beyond the 
cuddling and powdering stage there wouldn’t 
be any population,” snapped Mrs. Whistler. 
“ I often think childless couples are the 
happiest, they’ve got a disappointment they 
can nurse together ; it lasts even longer than 
a big family. You expect me to stay and get 
her married to a man I don’t want her to 
marry and her father would simply hate her 
to marry. She’s twisted everyone round her 
finger from the time she knew she’d got one. 
I shan’t know one second’s happiness till 
I’m back. I’ve given Zuriel her chance.” 

“ And Nicholas Timothy hasn’t taken it.” 
“ Do you suppose he will ? ” 

“ Think of the Pink Dance. Think what 
Isaacs’s money will achieve in the way of 
atmosphere. Think what Zuriel will look 
like. I always think a man should be 
married where he proposes.” 

“ It would shift the church a bit ; every pier 
its parson and every cinema its canon . ’ ’ Then 
she flustered again. “ Zuriel says I haven’t 
the right to go now ! And why not, pray } ” 
‘‘ Because,” said Bim soberly, “ you haven’t 


AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL 163 

the right to fix over the forty or fifty years 
she’s got to live the shadow of regret that 
nothing will efface ; you’ve no right to 
fill an empty life with endless speculations 
as to how near or how far she missed the life 
she wanted ; you’ve no right to corrode her 
life with the acid of what-might-have-been. 
It isn’t as if the possibility of it is removed 
from her by something there is no fighting 
against, like death, you are merely removing 
her from the possibility.” 

“ He could come down to Margate if he’s 
keen.” 

“You know he sails the evening after the 
dance. He’s no Lochinvar, Mrs. Whistler, 
though he’s a good fellow. He’ll realise the 
truth if he’s away from Zuriel for six months 
or a year.” 

“ Which is ? ” 

“ You know.” 

“ That she isn’t his class quite.” 

“ That’s it,” said Bim. “ And that he 
doesn’t really want to get married ; his days 
are too full, too interesting.” 

“ But Henry } ” 

“ Mr. Whistler won’t be back till the day 
after the dance. You could go down next 
week and prepare . . .” 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


164 

“ Now look here,” said Mrs. Whistler 
earnestly, “ let us dispense with all this talk 
of atmosphere and everything. Let’s have 
plain common sense for once in a way, even 
if it is a bit coarse. What do you think 
about it ? ” 

“ I think,” said Bim, “ that your daughter 
would consider you had sacrificed her, that 
she’d visit it on you and her father, however 
much she might try to forget. I think that 
your lives would be miserable in that bunga- 
low. If she has had her chance and misses 
it, she has only herself to blame. Nicholas 
will be out of England, out of her life. 
Suppose somebody made you miss the last 
train to what you considered Paradise . . 

“ I haven’t a brain that can think anything 
like it,” said Poppy Whistler, “ and I’m sure 
I’m very glad. Let’s come back to common 
sense again. I can’t afford a dress.” 

“ Ann and I will see to that.” 

“ Ann,” said Mrs. Whistler. “ Ann ! 
That girl has more sense in her little finger 
than the rest of you have in your whole 
bodies. I’ve come to feel she ought to marry 
and have lots of sons ; that’s the finest thing 
a woman can feel about another. She’s got 
brains, too, and she doesn’t twiddle them like 


AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL 165 

prongs, like the rest of you, she keeps them 
for use. If somebody with capital started 
Ann she’d be a second Lucile or Duff 
Gordon or whatever she is. I thought of 
asking Henry . . 

“ Do you think so ? ” said Bim ; he stared 
at her. 

“ If I told you all I thought about Ann 
Charlton you’d be astonished,” said Mrs. 
Whistler, looking at him very straight. 
“ And if I told you all I knew you’d have a 
fit.” 

“ Ann always manages things,” said Bim. 
“ She’s marvellous. I’d like to design the 
frock. I’d like to feel I’d had a hand in 
putting Zuriel exactly where she wants to 
go ; so few people even know where it 
is, far less how to get there. Of course it’s 
personal vanity. It would be perhaps my 
one work of merit. I’m rather a failure, 
Mrs. Whistler.” 

Mrs. Whistler’s dig was shrewd. “ Then 
you ought to be grateful you belong to a 
profession where it’s esteemed as much as 
success.” 

“ Of course,” he ceded, smiling, “ there is 
that.” 

“ What shall I say to Henry } ” 


i66 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Why say an3rthing ? You will be there 
to say it when he comes.’’ 

“ If I thought that.” 

“ Why not think it ? ” said Bim earnestly. 
“You’ve a hundred-per-cent chance that 
you’re right.” 

“ People forget that a woman loves her 
husband after the first year,” said Mrs. 
Whistler ; “ if I could only see what was 
right.” 

“ Is there any doubt ? ” 

“You don’t seem to think so.” 

“ May I go back to Zuriel and tell her ? 
She’ll be anxious.” 

“ Anxious, but planning,” said Mrs. 
Whistler. “ She’s always been like that.” 

She rose to her feet, a little worried wife 
and mother ; the tears were not far from her 
velvety eyes. 

“ I’m sure,” she said, “ I don’t know 
whether I’m standing on my head or my 
heels and I haven’t ever since we’ve been 
here. You can go and tell Zuriel I’ll stay 
till the morning after the dance, but not one 
minute longer. She thinks Lady Timothy 
will think it funny if I go back to Margate. 
Who on earth is that ? ” 

“ The front-door bell,” said Bim stupidly. 


AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL 167 

“ I know, stupid. Who’s ringing it at 
this time of night } Ferris is in bed. You 
go and see.” 

Bim ushered in the Marchesa and her maid 
Josephine. The Marchesa carried a French 
novel, a nickel sandwich-box and a silver 
flask. Her maid carried a valise. She wore 
a brown bonnet that enmeshed her in 
shadow. 

“ I know I’m a nuisance,” she said, 
“ dear Mrs. Whistler and dear Bim. And 
the place looking charming . . . charming. 
The flowers ! Delicious ! Josephine, n’est 
ce pas delicieux ? I have the appetite of a 
canary ; I shan’t worry anyone. Just a bed 
and a peck. I had a cable from an old cousin 
this morning ... a cousin in Cannes ; very 
lovely there lately, perhaps your husband’s 
letters tell you, Mrs. Whistler. I couldn’t 
go to an hotel. I hate them.” 

‘‘ I’ll make up a bed in a minute. You’d 
better have my room.” 

“ I wouldn’t hear of it.” 

“ It’s your house.” 

“ Forget it,” implored the Marchesa 
graciously ; ‘‘ and where is the lovely child ? ” 

Mrs. Whistler gave a little shrug — it was 
as if she dismissed Zuriel, the Marchesa and 


i68 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


the whole atmosphere to the realms beyond 
her understanding. 

The old lady sat down and the maid 
removed her cloak and bonnet. It seemed 
to Mrs. Whistler that she assumed her old 
role of spectator ; she was settling herself, 
waiting for something to happen with more 
than a mere expectation. 

“ Travelling fatigues me,” she mentioned. 

She seemed to gather the room round her 
like a beloved cloak she had lent and was 
pleased to regain. 

“ One’s home is one’s home.” 

“ No one realises it more than I do,” said 
Poppy Whistler. 

“ Ah ! ” said the Marchesa. “ But since 
we met you have scaled heights, leapt 
chasms. It’s a comedy I shall never forget.” 

“ Nor I,” said Mrs. Whistler. 

Bim too divined her air of a queen for 
whom a masquerade is being arranged. 

“ You are back on business, Marchesa ? ” 
he said. 

The old lady motioned the maid to hand 
her a bunch of papers she had placed on the 
top of the valise. She extracted a copy of 
the Sketch and opened it at two full-page 
photographs of Zuriel, her name beneath. 


AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL 169 

“ Does not your maternal pride surge ? ” 
she queried of Mrs. Whistler. 

No/’ she answered, “ not at the moment.” 

She looked at Bim and answered his 
question ; he perceived her ancient eyes to 
be flickering with laughter. It gave him a 
queer and not wholly pleasant sensation 
. . . they were treacherous little will-o’- 
the-wisps ; they would lead in such ways as 
should please her antique and fantastic fancy. 

“ I am here on pleasure, my dear young 
man,” she said. “ Not business, pleasure.” 


XVI 


THE MARGHESA SLEEPS 

O VER the restlessness of the actors 
brooded the quiescent watchfulness 
of the Marchesa. As they came 
and went nervily about their tasks the mental 
image of the old lady went with them, sitting 
beside the fire they lighted at her request, a 
figure fantastic and a little ominous. 

She had announced her visit to be one of 
pleasure on the evening of her arrival, but 
she did not go abroad to seek pleasure. 
She appeared to derive it in hidden and 
mysterious ways from her vigil beside the 
fire. When they spoke to her she woke 
suddenly from her torpor, alert and expectant; 
then she would fall into shrivelled immobility 
again like one who garners strength. 

Stella talked endlessly about her Ferris ; 
he left Mrs. Whistler the day after the 
Marchesa ’s arrival to make a little round of 
farewell visits before sailing for South Africa, 

170 


THE MARCHESA SLEEPS 


171 

where Stella would subsequently join him. 
All day long Stella’s uninspired exuberance 
sketched her future mixed with a just meed 
of gratitude to the old lady, and the old lady 
seemed to slumber in it like a child to her 
mother’s hushing. Stella and her Ferris 
bored her, so did the lingerie Stella waved 
delightedly before her sunken eyes, her un- 
inspired lingerie with its little bits of real 
lace and its cold English blue ribbon. 

She addressed her happiness and her 
gratitude to the Marchesa in the faithful, 
happy, inconsequent way of a child and the 
Marchesa was as impersonal a recipient as 
Father Christmas. 

Zuriel avoided her. She was candid about 
her reasons as usual. 

“ She naturally feels thanks and explana- 
tions are due to her. I have none to make 
yet.” 

“ Probably the poor old lady feels hurt at 
the way you’re avoiding her,” her mother 
suggested. “ She’s got that picture of you 
in the Sketch fixed up in her room.” 

“ I don’t think it’s prompted by affection,” 
said Zuriel. 

“ If she were a broker’s man, she couldn’t 
make me feel more at sixes and sevens,” 


172 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


said Mrs. Whistler, busy making the beef 
tea for the old lady. 

“ ril go and talk to her,” said Zuriel. 

But she found the Marchesa as usual fast 
asleep ; she might have been dead, so lifeless 
was the crumpled brownness of her face, 
so flabby the down hanging of her jewelled 
talons. 

Zuriel looked at her closely, then walked 
to the window and stood tapping noiselessly 
with her fingers on the glass. 

The Marchesa opened her surprisingly 
bright eyes and grinned at her back, but 
when Zuriel directed a sharp glance at her 
before she left the room, she was still asleep, 
nor had she moved. 

She went back to the kitchen and sat on 
the table swinging her legs. 

“ She’s asleep,” she said. 

“ Then it’s no good my putting this 
beef tea into a cup. Oh, dear ! I miss 
Ferris.” 

‘‘ Isn’t the woman any good ? ” 

“ She’s all right, but she’s strange ; keeps 
asking me where everything is.” She paused. 
“ I wish you’d find something to do, Zuriel, 
wandering round like a cat in a strange 
house. Why don’t you go down to the 


THE MARCHESA SLEEPS 173 

studio and see how they’re getting on with 
that pink frock of yours ? ” 

“ It only worries me ; it doesn’t look as 
if it ever could be done in time, and Bim 
doesn’t seem able to do anything unless he’s 
got his old pipe to suck at, and it keeps 
going out. They’ve boxes and boxes of those 
pink beads to thread yet.” 

“ And everyone costing fourpence. Zuriel, 
where has the money come from ? ” 

Ann,” said Zuriel. 

Mrs. Whistler balled her fat little hands 
together in the convulsive acrobatics of her 
imagination. 

“ But Bim . . she staggered ; “ do 
you both simply accept it ? Doesn’t he 
ask . . .” 

“ She said she’d sold something.” 

“ But my goodness ...” 

“ She isn’t doing it for me. Mother. She’s 
doing it for Bim and she loves doing it. She 
loves sitting and threading beads beside him ; 
she loves the stink of his old pipe. He’s 
awfully quiet ; I’ve never known him so 
quiet.” 

“ My goodness ! how can you let them 
both . . .” 

Zuriel walked about the little white-tiled 


174 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


kitchen in the sunlight, her voice was 
fretful. 

“ Don’t lecture, Mother dear. I’m all on 
edge ! I can’t help it. The day after to- 
morrow it’ll be all over, or all beginning. 
If it’s all beginning, it’ll be all right for Bim 
and Ann. They shall make my trousseau. 
. . . Help me through to-day and to-morrow, 
they seem so long — ^you can’t think how 
long ! ” 

“ They couldn’t seem longer to you than 
they do to me. I sat up last night and wrote 
to your father. Four pages of scribbling 
block and an indelible pencil. How I 
licked it ! This morning when I looked in 
the glass my mouth was all purple. I thought 
I’d got something. It gave me a shock. 
Oh ! but it has eased me ! I’ve always 
thought a confession-box something you 
oughtn’t to share, just like a bathing-box, 
but they have their uses. I told Henry 
everything, all in black and white.” 

“ My heavens ! You haven’t sent it ? ” 

“ No, but I like to think I will.” 

Mrs. Whistler began to cry, the round 
tears rolled down her round cheeks into the 
yellow basin in which she was mixing 
scones. 


THE MARCHESA SLEEPS 


175 


“ I feel all cold. Not sleeping always did 
make me cold. Oh dear ! I shall be glad 
when the next two days are over. I shan’t 
want to leave the bungalow this summer ; 
home’s good enough for me. I’m not cut 
out for adventure ; never was, never shall 
be.” 

Zuriel took the wooden spoon from her 
mother and stirred the mixture. 

“ I should like to know why the Marchesa 
came to London,” her mother meandered 
on. ‘‘I’ve got the idea she’s waiting for 
something to happen and I can’t shake it. 
I wonder what that woman is doing. I 
didn’t tell her I was coming down here to 
make cakes. I left her doing Josephine’s 
room. It’s all very worrying, to say the least 
of it, and if I’d known what I was letting 
myself in for, I wouldn’t have come, not 
if you’d begged me to on your bended knees. 
I asked that good-for-nothing to listen for 
the bell ; you can’t always hear it in here, 
not that one at the side. You’re covering 
yourself in flour. You’d better let me take 
it over and go out to the studio, that’s where 
your thoughts are. Fancy ! the woman’s 
got to go at twelve ; got her husband’s 
dinner to prepare. It’s a quarter to now. 


176 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

Josephine can get the tea, she’s off for the 
Marchesa this morning, goodness knows 
where ! Was that the bell ? ” 

Zuriel, wiping her little pointed fingers 
on the roller towel, paused. 

“ No,” she said, “ I didn’t hear it.” 

But the Marchesa did. She heard the 
charwoman trundling downstairs. She heard 
her open the front door. A good thing her 
front door had no knocker. Double knocks 
sounded through the house so. . . . 

As the charwoman passed she became 
aware of a little figure standing very erect at 
the door of the tiny ante-room. 

The figure stayed her with a motion of its 
jewelled fingers. 

“ A telegram ? ” she said. She spoke back 
into the room. “ Mrs. Whistler, a telegram.” 

“ For Mrs. Whistler,” said the charwoman. 

The Marchesa took it in stick-like fingers 
and took it into the room. 

The charwoman went upstairs again, but 
the little clock in the room upstairs was 
twenty minutes slow ; when she descended 
and discovered the fact by the aid of the 
kitchen clock she was so deeply annoyed 
that the telegram vanished from her memory. 


XVII 


ANN DISPOSES 

T he morning after the unexpected 
arrival of the Marchesa, Ann 
Charlton presented herself at the 
Central London office from which Isaacs 
directed his many suburban and provincial 
branches. It was the power-house of their 
bright activities. 

She was shown up immediately. 

Crisp, unshielded sunshine burnished a 
red-headed mannequin in a totally undis- 
tinguished jade frock which she distinguished 
enormously. Isaacs waved a hand towards 
the highly lacquered creature. 

“I’ve a dress show on at Birmingham 
to-morrow,” he explained. “I’m sending 
down this model on this girl. I expect to 
sell thousands, only six guineas. The com- 
bination of Theda Bara and a chapel social 
style. Could any woman resist it ? Every 
woman buys a frock off a mannequin because 

N 177 


178 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


there’s ‘ a something ’ about it ; she never 
knows the something was the mannequin 
till she’s got it home, and then she’s too 
vain to admit it. Turn round, Miss, and 
let us see the back. Every hook and eye 
welded on. Miss Charlton ; the women of 
Birmingham bring their elderly friends with 
them and their elderly friends tweak and 
pull and feel while they talk — they’ll get no 
change out of our firm.” 

He rose and jerked down the blinds un- 
expectedly and a soft, champagne light filled 
the sumptuous room. 

“You wanted to see the Milady matinee 
jacket,” said the gorgeous mannequin in a 
careful voice. 

Isaacs waved her away. 

“ Not now, thank you, and don’t let me be 
disturbed till I ring.” He explained to Ann 
animatedly, “ The Milady matinee jacket ! 
There’s a mint in the name. Pale blue 
or rose pink, government silk dyed ; I bought 
three miles of it — not three yards, three 
miles — faggoted on lace, fifteen shillings 
each. It’ll be bought all over England 
by women who’ll never wear it. There’s 
magic in the very name, there’s romance in 
it. There ain’t many overworked women 


ANN DISPOSES 


179 


in the middle years who don’t dream of a 
little short, sharp, dangerous illness without 
pain and spots ... an illness that shall 
bring back the family’s love and interest — a 
romantic rest. There aren’t many women 
who can’t afford to furnish a dream, if it’s 
only fifteen shillings. ‘ Milady ! ’ . . . it sug- 
gests manicures, fires in bedrooms, flowers, 
trim parlourmaids showing in kind-faced 
visitors ... all the things they know they 
can never really have, so they buy it.” 

“ Deluding them.” 

“ Bringing them nearer to their heart’s 
desire,” said the Jew. He sat down and 
the soft glow seemed to lap round them both. 
“ Well, Ann Charlton,” he said, “ you never 
worried a busy man in the morning for 
nothing.” 

“ Do you still want me in your business ? ” 

“ What’s gone wrong ? ” said Isaacs. 

“ Bim wants money,” said Ann Charlton 
in a quiet, unconcerned voice. “ There 
isn’t a penny in the coffers.” 

“ Bim wants money. I didn’t know he 
knew there was such a thing ! It’s marvellous 
how that lad’s coming on. What’s he want 
it for ? ” 

“ Zuriel Whistler.” 


i8o THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

Isaacs bent forward ; the pale light, 
banishing his shallowness, gave strength and 
dignity to his rather roughly hewn features, 
his lips were thrust out making runnels of 
shadow on either side of his big nose. 

“ Ann Charlton,” he challenged, “ haven’t 
you any pride ? ” 

“ I don’t think so,” said Ann, her hands, 
her pretty mouth, her voice — all were steady, 
steady as a rock. I’ve thought things out 
carefully,” she said. “ I never talk much. 
When you ask me if I haven’t any pride, 
what you really mean is that I ought to 
conform to recognised standards of egotism. 
It is more comfortable, I suppose. You 
see what I haven’t quite explained is that it 
isn’t for Zuriel I want the dress. Yes, I 
think my egotism would step in there. It’s 
for Bim I’m doing this thing. I don’t quite 
understand him these days, but I know he isn’t 
happy. You ’rebot superstitious, Mr. Isaacs? ” 

‘‘ Superstition is fear ” — Isaacs’s voice was 
extremely robust and bracing. “ I am not 
afraid of anything or anybody.” 

“ That’s nice,” said Ann ; her swift little 
smile glimmered at him. “ Bim is suddenly 
nonplussed by the past and doubtful of 
the future. He’s conceived the queer idea 


ANN DISPOSES 


i8i 


that the making of this dress is an augury 
for the future, the commencement of some- 
thing new. I don’t say it, but I think that 
if he is prevented from making it he’ll 
consider it an opportunity lost.” 

“ If you married him, do you think you 
could keep his nose to the grindstone ? ” 

“ I would disguise the grindstone,” said 
Ann. “ That’s all the cleverest woman can 
do. I haven’t told you everything. There 
will be a lot of the five hundred left after 
the dress is made. ... I thought that 
would start Bim somewhere better than where 
we are. . . .” 

“ Hell ! ” exploded Isaacs. “ Where do 
you come in ? ” 

In the evenings as a friend to sit and 
talk things over,” said Ann ; that’s ail I’ve 
ever been. It pleases me to do this thing. 
Bim has reached a stage in his career where 
he wants impetus, he wants jumping-off 
ground, and I think the making of this 
dress will provide it. I can’t explain to you, 
because you’re trying not to understand, and 
I feel that all the time. For Bim Redgold 
the making of this frock has spiritual signifi- 
cance. You may roar with laughter. He 
believes that his future rests on it . . . well, 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


182 

that very belief has placed his future there. 
I want to do this thing ! ” said Ann Charlton, 
her hands suddenly clasped. “ Perhaps it 
is a beginning for me, too. WeTe utterly 
broke ; weVe no stock, we owe the rent of 
our little shop. I owe the milkman and the 
baker. I want to give Bim his chance. 
Oh ! he is worth it.” 

“ I don’t see him your way,” said the Jew ; 
“he’s a charming fellow and damn clever. 
He wants organising. All cleverness wants 
organising. Anything that runs wild runs to 
seed — has since the old garden of Eden.” 
He looked at Ann. “ My ! ” he said, “ good 
women are uncomfortable things to have 
about.” 

“ I wasn’t brought up to think doing what 
you want to was goodness,” said Ann. “ I 
want to do this thing more than I want to do 
anything in my life. It’ll make Bim happy, 
it’ll make him content. It will please him 
to serve beauty.” 

“ Is he in love with Zuriel Whistler ? ” 

“ It doesn’t go beyond her face,” said 
Ann. “ That’s why he keeps before her 
face and never looks behind.” 

“ Three years is a long time to tie yourself 
up for, Ann Charlton.” 


ANN DISPOSES 183 

“ It will seem shorter because I did it for 
him.” 

“ If I had you and Redgold doing team 
work Fd open in Bond Street under another 
name. I wouldn’t curb you — I’d give you 
a run for my money, just to see. I believe 
in you, but I believe in Redgold if he’s 
pruned and organised a bit. He’s wonderful 
when he doesn’t run amuck. Of course he’d 
hate the discipline of an organised business, 
but it would be the making of him. I’d 
have his name known in Paris under three 
years. There’s enough snob in me to relish 
an artistic success.” 

“ Bim would hate it.” 

“ I dunno,” said Isaacs. “ There’s peace 
in discipline . . . there’s a clean feeling like 
some folks get out of religion, a feeling of 
being spruced up and polished ; fellows in 
the army found that. You don’t know 
liberty till you’ve lost it. I could make 
Redgold if he’d knuckle under.” He paused 
and frowned at Ann. “ Have you thought 
this thing over ? ” he demanded. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Quietly ? ” 

“ Very quietly.” 

“ You’re sure ? ” 


184 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Fin quite sure.” 

“ Three years is a long time.” 

“ Fve reckoned it out.” 

He tapped his pen on his blotter. 

“You women are so emotional.” 

“ I never was less so,” said Ann. 

“ The whole thing is a funny business.” 

“ It must seem so to you.” 

“ I deal in material things.” 

“ They seem so to you,” repeated Ann. 

There was a knock at the door. 

“ Lady Timothy’s secretary. Sir. She 
must see you and she can’t wait.” His 
secretary, bland, efficient, looked at Ann in 
her shabby coat and skirt. “ She’s in my 
room. You said you didn’t wish to be dis- 
turbed.” 

Isaacs rose. 

“ I leave you, Ann Charlton,” he said. 
“ Now think it over. Three years is a long 
time. This Pink Dance has given me more 
trouble than the opening of a dozen new 
branches.” 

He left Ann in the room limpid with 
champagne light, apparently thinking. 

She was there when he came back, quiet, 
impassive. 

“ Thought ? ” 


ANN DISPOSES 


185 


“ I didn’t need to.” 

You know,” he said, “ you ought to 
come to this affair of mine. It’ll be stupen- 
dous. We’re going to send up five hundred 
rockets at ten o’clock, the air will be thick 
with pink stars. Oh ! it’ll be quite stupen- 
dous. You ought to come, Ann.” 

“ I’ll think of you,” said Ann. 

“I’m only giving one prize — a pink pearl 
and platinum ring. It doesn’t look pink to 
me, but that’s its nomenclature. I never 
could see anything in pearls myself.” 

“ Zuriel Whistler’s dress will win it,” said 
Ann confidently. 

“ It’ll be cute advertising for Bim if it 
does.” 

“ You see^^ said Ann, “ even you see that 
it may be the beginning.” 

“ If I could put ‘ Designer of the prize- 
winning dress at the Pink Dance just signed 
a three years’ contract with . . .’ Advertis- 
ing can’t be too blatant, my dear girl.” He 
paused. “ Have you ever read about those 
revels at Versailles ? This’ll knock spots off 
’em, spots off ’em. People don’t remember 
when Lady What-you-may-call gave her 
select dance for the Prince of Wales, but by 
Jove ! people remember those freak dinners 


i86 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


American millionaires gave before the war. 
Did you tell me the old Italian who lent 
the Whistlers her house has turned up 
again ? ’’ 

‘‘ Yes,” said Ann. 

“ I wonder why. Fll bet there’s an idea 
at the back of it. Fll bet there is. My 
heavens, where’s everybody this morning ? 
That thing ought to have been ready moons 
ago. 

“ What thing ? ” 

“ Your contract, my dear,” said Isaacs. 

“ Fll sign it now,” said Ann. 

He put his hand on her shoulder, pressing 
a little, peering with his brilliant, kindly 
eyes. 

“ What’s at the back of this really, Ann 
Charlton ? ” 

“ Love, I suppose. We can’t both go on ; 
mental freedom and individuality have be- 
come mere shibboleths, one of us must 
knuckle under, or both of us. Life isn’t 
possible without money. That’s the stark 
truth. I’ve always known it. Don’t think 
I shall feel uplifted and resigned every day 
all through those three years. I shan’t. 
I shall have my days of peevish revolt at 
lack of freedom. I’ve had my dreams too. 


ANN DISPOSES 


187 

They seemed so small and undemanding 
that I used to think they must come true 
because of their very littleness when all 
around I heard people asking and expecting 
and demanding such an awful lot of life. 
Bim can achieve all the things I Ve wanted to 
achieve for myself. I expect there’s selfish- 
ness at the back of it all really. In my mind 
Bim Redgold is my man. There’s the kernel 
of it all. No one knows it, he least of all, 
but women live in their minds and so my 
mind is peaceful and happy doing this thing, 
gratified and warmed because it is the 
recognition of a secret relationship that I 
alone have created. It pleases me that I 
should make it possible for him to make this 
dress because his heart is set on it. It is all 
feeding the hunger that I know can never be 
satisfied. I can’t explain what he means to 
me. He is so joyous, so unbelieving of the 
prosaic side of life. He delights me and he 
always gives you the feeling in his star- 
chasing that he may pull one down yet and 
alter life for you. I suppose it is that, with 
all his fantastic notions, his rather selfish 
refusal to grow up ; he understands why 
women are sad and why they are glad ; he 
understands the little things that move them 


1 88 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

deeply. Always, always he sees the other 
person’s point of view. It makes people 
say he’s unstable. He can always see what 
the other man thinks.” She paused. “You 
won’t tell Bim I’ve signed this contract, not 
till after the Pink Dance. I want it to be 
unalloyed pleasure.” 

“ Not if you don’t wish. Probably I shan’t 
see him. The beastly thing eats away my 
hours.” 

“ I have your word ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

The secretary came in with the contract 
and withdrew after an incurious stare at 
Ann, who reached for a pen. 

“ Oh, no,” said Isaacs ; he took it from 
her fingers and put it back. 

“ I am going to read it to you first, Ann 
Charlton, and, because you are a woman, 
I am going to read it twice.” 


XVIII 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 

T hey lunched at the Savoy ; they 
had a table which overlooked the 
Thames. As the meal progressed 
the prettiest eating-room in London became 
a mere curtain against which their glances 
lingered, flickered and crossed with in- 
creasing frankness, and the groups of other 
lunchers became unconsciously the crowd 
which London can always provide to produce 
privacy for lovers. 

His twinkling, tawny little camel’s eyes, 
heavy-lidded, appreciated the brightness of 
the burnished day. 

“ I say, you know,” he said, “it’s very 
jolly being here with you and all that. A 
sunny summer morning in London always 
makes me feel bucked and romantic. I once 
told a fellow that out in Newfoundland. 
We’d just smashed the gramophone ; you 
get like that, and we were both really con- 
189 


190 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


trite ; you get like that too. IVe never seen 
anyone so shocked. He thought it was 
indecent, like feeling suddenly religious in a 
Turkish bath. Queer fellow, all his thoughts 
nicely hemmed and all that. I don’t know 
what I would have done if you hadn’t come. 
Home’s terrible and Isaacs is lunching 
there. Quite a good fellow, Isaacs, a little 
too well tailored, but it’s his only fault. 
Mater’s only consolation was that it was 
summer and that otherwise they might have 
forgotten and had pork. I said, ‘ when in 
doubt serve with onion sauce,’ and got 
fearfully snubbed. I’m looking forward to 
Isaacs’s affair to-night. I always do look 
forward to things. I’m looking forward to 
this more than anything in my life.” 

“ It will be fun.” 

“ I feel you’re snubbing me, Zuriel,” said 
Nicholas, “ but my natural vanity won’t let 
me acknowledge it.” They laughed together. 
“ You know you’re jolly, that’s what’s so 
awfully nice. Jolliness — that’s what makes 
the world go round, jolliness and common 
sense. I should say you’re absolutely packed 
with both.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” said Zuriel. 

“ You must have it in the wilds, laughter 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 191 

tons of laughter, quinine and a body belt, 
and you can treat a tarantula as a joke or 
a jaguar or any old thing. I hate fellows who 
get broody.” 

“ Tell me,” said Zuriel, ‘‘ about some of 
the places you’ve been to, some of the 
things you’ve done.” 

He told her in his lazy, pleasant voice till 
her eyes glistened and her charming lips 
parted. He swept her enchanted down 
strange rivers and through stranger paths. 
His words were careless, commonplace ; he 
created atmosphere by prosaic enumeration 
of the articles that went to make it. It was 
her imagination that lent them colour, shape, 
scent, that indefinable something that is the 
heart of romance. 

“ To live a life like that ! ” she said. 

He said inconsequently, ‘‘ I wonder if 
you know what you look like, sitting there 
glowing at me. I should like to paint you.” 

Do you ? ” 

“ Oh ! dabble, you know, but it keeps you 
from going batty. I like sunsets . . . you 
race ’em and slosh ’em on ; there was a 
perfect sport once at Delhi ... I used to 
try and catch it every night ; there I was, 
splashing away like a baby in its bath, every 


192 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


pore doing its duty, and before I caught it 
by its edge it would have popped into 
yesterday. I never once.’’ 

She said in a very still voice : 

“ And to-morrow night you’ll be off 
again ? ” 

“Yes, I go at midnight. I wish I were 
not going. I’ve never wished that before. 
It won’t be for long — three months, but 
twelve months hasn’t seemed long before.” 

“ You’ll have fun.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Nicholas Timothy. 

After lunch he took her into the sunshine ; 
they walked beside the river, everything 
sparkled ; men, like little flies, crawled over 
the impassive face of Big Ben, where they 
had crawled was white ; they walked through 
the little gardens where people on seats 
munched sandwiches and bananas and stared 
at sooty little roses and the velvet bravery of 
primulas, and dropped their sandwich-paper 
and banana-peel obediently into little boxes 
as if it were an act of grace. 

“ Let’s go where there are hats,” he said. 
“ Spring isn’t over yet. Spring means 
something different to everyone. To me 
spring in London means hats — hats in 
shops, hats on women’s heads, rows of dead 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 193 

hats waiting to be bought, rows of hats 
bobbing on women’s heads. Do you get 
what I mean, Zuriel ? You don’t think I’m 
funny ? Something is symbolic of spring to 
us all. For me it isn’t hills or birds, or young 
leaves when I’m in London. ... It’s hats 
and the hat look in women’s eyes. I’d love 
to wear a new toque in May. I wish men 
did.” 

Zuriel laughed, but she understood com- 
pletely ; they were alike in their zestful hunt 
for emotions and impressions ; they were 
unepicurean. 

“ Let’s go down Oxford Street and Regent 
Street,” she said. 

“ Walk ? ” 

“ Why not ? ” 

“ It’s such tremendous fun being with 
you.” 

“ Is it ? ” said Zuriel. 

A feeling of gaiety possessed them both, a 
consciousness of having suddenly become 
heritors of something vague but splendid, 
their youth surged deliciously in them, they 
laughed at nothing and it became something 
. . . something that stretched softly and 
shiningly between them. 

He said, “ I suppose it’s effeminate liking 


194 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


good clothes and pleasant things and all that. 
I suppose it’s all a question of income ; to 
some people a daily bath is a sinful luxury.” 

“ It’s more a question of geyser,” Zuriel 
laughed. 

They walked down the Strand, everywhere 
were men with the dull little-income look 
lifted momentarily from their faces by the 
joyous dazzle of the day. The women out- 
side Charing Cross Station sold country 
roses with the recent sousings in the water 
bucket clinging like dew to their ingenuous 
pink faces. It was a will-o’-the-wisp day of 
stirring hopes, a day when men bought Zane 
Grey and yet older men pulled Kipling from 
their shelves, a day when in thousands of 
suburban homes women held hopeful in- 
quests on last year’s clothes and tasted in the 
nuptial evening door-mat kiss an ancient 
flavour that could never revive. 

“ Everything feels so safe and sure and 
sane to-day,” Nicholas told her. “ And yet 
it isn’t, it never has been, and we should hate 
it if it was . . . that’s droll, isn’t it ? I don’t 
feel at all a carnal and cloddish brute to- 
day, you know, but of course I am, only I’m 
enjoying it all so tremendously. I feel 
spiritual, positively spiritual. I feel we ought 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 195 

to be able to walk along seeing ourselves 
think, not needing the dull conveyance of 
words. Fm full of uplift, youVe got yourself 
to blame.” 

“ Why ? ” 

Nicholas Timothy shot a twinkling look at 
her, his tawny little eyes were gentle. 

“ Because you are adorable and utterly 
beautiful. I should like to go on, Zuriel„ 
but the Strand isn’t the place, and people 
keep bumping into us. To-night is the time 
and the hour. If you are going to marry me 
and my luck’s in, I may be the last proposal 
you’ll have and you should enjoy it. I’d 
like you to enjoy it, I should really. I love 
you terribly this morning, but I love you with 
a jolly old sunlight love ; it’s too jolly to be 
romantic. At the moment I can only tell 
you I love you, but to-night I will tell you 
how I love you and why I love you . . . it’s 
all kneading itself inside me. Zuriel, you 
are going to want to hear ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Zuriel. She knew that her 
voice shook, felt something else in her heart 
shake too, something surprisingly new and 
frail, but perfect like a just opened harebell. 

“ I think,” said Nicholas a little un- 
steadily, “ we could get a lot out of life and 


196 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


I should adore to look at you always. That 
seems to me a fine thing to say to a woman 
and I say it with all my heart, my dear.’' 

They were crossing Trafalgar Square. 
Zuriel turned suddenly and looked at 
him. 

“ I wanted you to ask me to marry you,” 
she said, and had a feeling of tearing off 
something cheap and a little soiled that had 
spoilt her own effect for herself. 

‘‘ I’m glad about that,” said Nicholas. 

“ I tried to make you.” 

“ I think I like that,” he assured her. 
‘‘ Yes, I’m quite sure I like it. It pleases me 
enormously.” 

“ I wanted to live the life you live,” said 
Zuriel. “To do the things you do, see the 
things and people you see. I want you to 
know these things, Nicholas.” 

He spoke slowly and reflectively, holding 
his trim, attractive figure upright. 

“ That all seems good to me, Zuriel ; it 
seems to promise things, that’s how I see it. 
It’s better than blind passion. It’s con- 
structive. You see marriage as a vista, not a 
culmination. Nothing that culminates con- 
tinues to live. I’m rather a believer in 
starting human relationships from the head. 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 197 

I don’t know that Tm expressing myself 
awfully well, but perhaps you get the gist.” 

“ Why is one trained to think it is almost 
perverted to love with common sense } ” 
said Zuriel. 

“ I dunno,” said Nicholas, “ but it is 
so.” He grinned at her that queer, twisted, 
twinkling smile. “ You’re awfully impersonal 
for a woman , ” he complimented her . ‘ ‘ That ’s 
another thing that’s so splendid about you. 
Women make everything personal. That’s 
what makes them so impossible in wars and 
politics ... of course war and politics are 
personal — ^frightfully, shockingly personal — 
but the only way to give them the dignity 
necessary for their continuance is to maintain 
the magnificent semblance of aloof im- 
personality. Women will uncover their 
ravening self-interest. It simply won’t do. 
It’s one of the most solid pillars of hypocrisy 
on which civilisation has rested, the ancient 
fallacy that man can be impersonal in de- 
ciding politics and destinies,” he chuckled. 
“ And behold she walked abroad with 
Hansard and found him a dull dog. You 
are magnificent. Even though you know I 
love you, I can break away from you as a 
subject, even as a thought, and find no 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


198 

puzzled reproach in your eyes. I even 
believe you’ll let me read the papers at 
breakfast. I once knew a woman who did 
that. I decided I’d leave her my money 
when I died, but she died first ... I’m not 
surprised.” 

In every window colour blazed in the 
limpid sunshine, exhilarating, alluring, subtle 
in its massed appeal to the senses, its indi- 
vidual, ticketed appeal to the purse. 

‘‘ I don’t think you quite understand what 
I am trying to tell you. I found life at home 
deadly. I tried to catch you.” 

“ I’m so glad you did, you know. I’ve 
never met anyone I’d sooner fall to, it’s a 
positive pleasure.” He stopped in front of 
Liberty’s window ; “a poem spread for the 
unheeding,” he called it and challenged her 
to heed. 

“You don’t mind ? ” Zuriel was puzzled. 
“ It doesn’t cheapen me ? ” 

“ Every woman catches every man . . . 
everything helps her, including her Creator. 
Is it astonishing that she wins ? I’ll be 
unconventional enough to say I always 
expected some woman would catch me, and 
I know you did . . . does that satisfy your 
passion for truth ? ” 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 199 

“ Yes,’’ said Zuriel. 

“ I wonder,” he mused, “ what your father 
will say. I wonder what that Redgold 
chap will say. He’s in love with you, you 
know.” 

“ Not in that way. He’s in love with some- 
thing he can’t have, and knows isn’t really 
there.” 

“ I shall have to advertise for a psycho- 
analyst.” 

“ They’d find Bim awfully easy,” said 
Zuriel. “ In some things he’s never grown 
up. He can’t face realities and so he dresses 
them up. It isn’t the mother-fixture. I 
don’t know quite what it is. He creates his 
own world because he finds discomfort in 
the actual world. There’s only one person 
who’d suit him.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Ann Charlton. He could let her rooms 
in his world, but she’d always be able to 
dart out in time to take the kettle off and get 
the rent money.” 

“ By Jove ! that’s clever.” 

‘‘ She loves him so much she could believe 
an)^hing she knew wasn’t true.” 

“ But he doesn’t love Ann ? ” 

“ He doesn’t know she’s there. I fitted in 


200 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


with his mental furnishing better, my dear 
boy ; I have the outfit physically and he 
made me over completely where I didn’t fit 
in : my selfishness, my egotism, my utter 
materialism. He wants mental protection 
and Ann would rejoice to give it to him. It 
would be a passionate pleasure to her, and 
she could gambol in her free hours in his 
world. She’d be able to do that.” 

“ I shouldn’t have called Redgold a weak 
chap. I mean he’s got lots of pep. I thought 
him frightfully amusing and original and all 
that, fascinating in fact — those fellows who 
go tilting at windmills always are ; it’s so 
difficult to do it with an air these days. I 
mean it was all right to strike an attitude 
when fellows wore real lace frills round the 
bottom of their short plush pants.” 

“ How absurd you are ! ” 

“Yes,” said Nicholas. “ Isn’t it splendid ? ” 
“I’m afraid your mother will be awfully 
disappointed,” said Zuriel. 

“ Of course she will,” Nicky agreed cheer- 
fully. “ Mothers always are. If you touch 
the Mater correctly on the conventions you 
can do anything with her ; all her feelings 
are standard middle -class pattern, but her 
heart’s all gold, bless her ! What would you 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 201 

like me to tell her — that you’re a pure, sweet 
girl, or a big-hearted, simple child ? ” 

“ Am I either ? ” 

“ I don’t know, but she’ll expect me to 
say one or the other, and she can’t bear to 
be disappointed in the conventions. That’s 
where the Pater annoys her.” 

“Tell her that I’ll make you a good 
wife.” 

“ She’d never forgive me. That’s what 
she’ll expect you to tell her.” He smiled. 
“ I laugh at the old Mater, but I think the 
devil of a lot of her really. She’s been fine. 
You ask her advice, she’ll love that. I 
failed her there. I’ve never been able to 
screw myself up to doing it because I always 
knew just exactly what it would be.” 

“ And your father ? ” 

“ Pater loves you now because you’re like 
little Lily.” 

“ Your baby sister who died. Did you 
love her ? ” 

“ No, I rather resented her. Of course|I 
never remember her. For years after she 
died she used to mess up the Christmas 
dinner and spoil parties by not being there. 
I hated little Lily when I was small. I 
always think second-hand sentimentalism is 


202 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


so hard on children, really cruel. Of course 
now I see things. Parents would be awfully 
sick if they realised how long it took their 
children to begin to see things they always 
thought they understood instinctively. Shall 
you write and tell your Pater ? ” 

‘‘ He’ll be home from Cannes . . . prob- 
ably the day after to-morrow ; there won’t 
be any need.” 

“ That’s splendid ! I want to meet him. 
You’re like your mother in a way.” 

‘‘ Father’s thin,” twinkled Zuriel. 

“ I like your mother. She’s so real.” 

‘‘ I could so easily have been the sort of 
daughter she wanted,” said Zuriel. “ The 
chances of my being born that sort were 
nearly ninety per cent in her favour. ... I 
think it is a shame. Now I shall go abroad 
with you.” 

“ People only hire their children, they 
never buy them,” said Nicky. 

They wandered into the Park : fenced-off 
flowers and fenced-olf sward, people fenced 
off by the fact that they sat on seats and ate 
bananas openly, other people fenced off by 
the fact that they rode in limousines, children 
fenced off in their prams, children fenced off 
in their rags . . . everyone fenced off . . . 


ANj IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 203 

segregated like eggs in an egg-box by the 
process of their upbringing and their secret 
mentality. Only the brief flashing play of 
the butterflies in the sunshine and the 
sequined glitter of the flies seemed free, 
but to the two who strolled the world was 
momentarily a carpet for their feet, a carnival 
for their seeing. 

“ I feel I stand on the edge of things,” 
said Nicholas. “ It’s an adorable feeling. I 
want to propose most horribly, Zuriel. Had 
you made up your mind I should do it to- 
night ? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” said Zuriel. 

“ That is a nuisance,” complained Nicholas 
with shining, laughing eyes. “ Of course 
you’ve grown accustomed to the idea of my 
proposing to you, because you knew I 
would ; but it’s all a novelty to me. Last 
night I saw you in a certain dress . . . your 
hair was down. That dress ...” He 
paused and stared intently at a child in blue 
tossing a blue balloon ; up it went, up went 
his thoughtful eyes. “ I was afraid in my 
dream,” he said, “ very afraid. It was 
awfully funny. Then I saw by your eyes 
that you expected me to come, that you had 
been expecting me quite a long time and my 


204 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


fears died like those of a child at the sight of 
its mother. Awfully weird ; but you get 
the idea ? I knew where I’d seen the dress. 
I went with Mater to see her frock for to- 
night and Madame Zaviers had made it to 
the design of a girl who died of ’flu. She 
never even saw it. Pity. She showed it to 
us. Queer how your mind connects things, 
awfully queer. I say, are you getting tired ? 
Oughtn’t you to lie down } ” He blinked 
at the children playing or walking sedately 
with their nurses. ‘‘ I like children,” he 
said. “ They’re such hopeful, jolly little 
beggars and there’s something ghastly about 
a Christmas without kids and it’s a toss up 
borrowing them ... it really is. I once 
borrowed some piccaninnies in Guatemala ; 
they oiled themselves with the candles and 
then ate ’em off the Christmas-tree. Of 
course Christmas only comes once a year, 
but it always seems to be popping up some- 
how. I like children going to bed, too. 
They look so rosy and tired and clean. Of 
course there ’d be days when I wouldn’t want 
to see mine ; all real fathers have lots of days, 
like that, but I’d always like to prop the door 
open and secretly watch them pass on their 
way to bed ... a sort of jolly Gladys Peto 


AN IMPERSONAL SUBJECT 205 

frieze one had managed oneself.” He 
laughed. 

“ I like nice children,” said Zuriel, “ and 
I hate them in cheap boots.” 

“ I couldn’t bear it if I couldn’t fit them 
\ip properly,” agreed Nicholas promptly. 
■“I’m all with you there. There’s a sense of 
responsibility comes with years. I suppose 
it’s good citizenship really. I’m broad- 
minded and all that. I mean if people choose 
to live together and all that sort of thing, well, 
I hope they’ll have it fine. Lots of fellows try 
to impress one with their irregularities. I 
always say, ‘ Oh ! are you } Well, I hope 
it’ll be fine.’ I do hope it’ll be fine for them 
— I mean, I haven’t any ideas beyond that ; 
awfully slack morally, I know, but I do think 
one has a duty to kids. One owes such a lot 
to anyone you’ve simply made to do an 
irreparable thing like getting born. It must 
be a most curious feeling being a father. I 
don’t believe in behaving like the silly 
devils in the patent food advertisements . . . 
going all to bits and being emotional just 
when everybody wants bucking up. I 
should go and increase my insurance premium 
or something real. I feel sure you’d under- 
stand.” 


2o6 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


‘‘ I feel sure I should/’ said Zuriel. 

“ You’re so jolly full of common sense,” 
said Nicholas. “ So jolly full of it.” He 
paused. “ I’ve got a bit of a surprise for 
you at home.” 

“ Really ! ” said Zuriel. 

They looked at each other. 

Nicholas looked away. 

‘‘ Another minute of that,” he murmured 
a little breathlessly, “ and I should have 
proposed before to-night.” 


XIX 


THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 

T he big insurance building opposite 
poured a river of girls into the late 
afternoon sunshine. It was as if 
some large, unseen hand pushed them and sent 
them scurrying and laughing down the stairs. 

Isaacs watched them from his window as 
he watched them every night. He saw them 
neither as girls nor types ; he saw them 
merely as a crowd of clients for whose 
imagination he strove to find the right diet. 
He surveyed their neat feet and reflected 
with wonder that in the lean years the retail 
boot business was the only one with a healthy 
array of figures. 

Over his shoulder Bim Redgold watched 
them too for a minute before he observed 
politely that it was a pleasant evening and a 
lovely night for the Pink Dance. 

“ I thought you would be down there,” he 
added. 


207 


2o8 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Fve nothing to alter and everything to 
fuss about,” said the Jew, “ so I thought Fd 
stay here. Didn’t expect to see you either, 
exactly. Sit down.” 

“ Fve come about Ann Charlton,” said 
Bim, and sat wrinkling his forehead and 
blinking. 

‘‘ The hell you have ! ” said Isaacs. 

“ Funny,” said Bim slowly, “ how you go 
on being a fool and then suddenly see 
things.” 

“ You or me ? ” said Isaacs truculently. 

“ Oh, me,” said Bim. ‘‘ It doesn’t seem 
the time to come to you . . . not from your 
point of view, but it does from mine. I 
couldn’t go on sitting beside Ann and not 
come.” 

“ I suppose Ann told you ? ” said Isaacs. 

“ I want Ann to have her chance.” 

“ She’ll have it. Ann’s no lop-eared 
Lizzie from an Art School.” He was getting 
peeved with this brilliant-eyed young man 
who stared and did not listen. Soon he 
would be angry. He felt resentment against 
Ann, too ; she had asked him not to tell this 
clever fool about her contract and then told 
him herself. So like a woman ! 

‘‘ If you still want me in the firm I’ll come,” 


THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 209 

said Bim. “ Fll sign the three years’ con- 
tract. I want to start Ann in a place of her 
own. She’s worth it. She’s never had a 
chance mugging along with me. It’s taken 
me years to see that. I want that five hundred 
pounds to give Ann Charlton the chance she 
deserves. I wouldn’t design her models. 
I understand no contract would permit that, 
but the five hundred would buy a short 
lease in a decent shop.” 

“ Why ? ” fired Isaacs. 

“Do you always know why you do 
things ? ” 

“ Ever since I’ve been born.” 

“ I think you’re lucky,” said Redgold 
non-committally. “ It must simplify things 
so.” 

“ Ann know of this ? ” 

“ No, and she mustn’t till it’s all settled 
and I’ve got the five hundred to give 
her.” 

Isaacs thought rapidly ; his racing mental 
comments on the situation flickered in his 
brilliant brown eyes. Ann had not told him 
then ? Isaacs had difficulty in handling a 
situation only partially defined. He had 
wanted Bim Redgold’s co-operation for years. 
He felt his way blandly and delicately. 


210 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ All this is rather unexpected, Redgold. 
How did you find your way up to begin 
with ? The lift girl didn’t bring me your 
name.” 

“ I walked past her. The outer office was 
empty ; your secretary had gone. Your 
name is on the door, you know. It was 
awfully simple.” 

“ Apparently. How do I know you won’t 
change your mind to-morrow ? ” 

“You don’t know,” Bim agreed, “ but 
I do.” 

Isaacs stared at him heavily, queerly 
puzzled. The young man was betraying 
characteristics alien to his type ; his speech, 
his outlook had suddenly solidified and 
crisped. 

“ You’ll hate it.” 

“ I can’t hate it more than I think I will 
and that hasn’t stopped my coming to you. 
I can’t see that that concerns you. I offer 
you my services for three years, and I shall 
do my best to give you every satisfaction. 
That is surely all that concerns you. I am 
not trying to be rude. It is merely that I 
have suddenly come into possession of a 
starting-point. I’ve never owned one before. 
I offer you myself at that starting-point, 


THROUGH A GLASS DARKLYj 21 1 

knowing I shall be competent to advance 
from it.” 

“ What is the starting-point ? ” said Isaacs 
in unguarded curiosity. 

“ I haven’t examined it yet,” fenced 
Redgold coolly. “ It is so pleasant just to 
possess it. I designed this blouse in the 
tube coming along. I think it’s rather 
neat.” 

Isaacs took it. After a minute he said 
quietly, “ It is extremely neat. May I keep 
it?” 

“ Certainly,” said Bim. He invited per- 
mission by the lift of an eyebrow and lit a 
cigarette. One can’t achieve anything 
without discipline,” he said. “ Usually one 
pays for discipline, but you are going to pay 
me for a discipline I should have received 
years ago. Do you think,” his pleasant 
eyes twinkled, “ it’ll make a little man 
of me ? ” 

“ I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Isaacs. 
“ Men don’t do things for abstract reasons, 
Redgold. You didn’t come to me for 
discipline.” 

“ Perhaps you’re right,” agreed Redgold. 

Isaacs rose and paced the room. They 
had closed the doors of the big insurance 


212 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


office opposite. He was troubled by a 
question of business morality. Should he 
tell Redgold of Ann Charlton's visit and the 
contract she had signed with him ? He 
wanted Redgold, he had wanted him ever 
since he had first seen and appreciated his 
work. He saw Redgold as the pinnacle long 
desired, almost despaired of. His business 
career crowned with it, how far might he not 
venture and how successfully ? He realised 
with a start how resolutely he had put this 
possibility from his mind and so gauged the 
strength of his desire for it to happen. Here 
was Redgold under his hand for the tethering. 

“ I don’t know what to do,” Isaacs ob- 
served truthfully. 

“ It is I who am doing it,” Redgold replied 
casually. 

“ It’s a bigger thing than you think.” 

“ I hope it is.” 

“ You’ve had years to do big things.” 

“ And I haven’t done them. I’ve come to 
you not as a way out, but as a way in. I 
shall have my spare hours to paint and model 
in. It may be the making of me. I haven’t 
made myself. There’s Ann. I want Ann to 
have her chance. She’s only had my rotten 
second-hand dreams to live on. I’ve sacri- 


THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 213 

ficed her to them. That shop ... it 
wasn’t any good ; all child’s play.” 

“ Absolutely,” acquiesced Isaacs heartily. 

“ The dress Zuriel Whistler is wearing 
to your dance to-night, Isaacs — ^Ann Charlton 
paid for it, because I wanted to make it. 
It’ll take the first prize ...” 

“ What an ad’ ! ” Isaacs was suddenly 
virile, eager, grinning, but Redgold brushed 
it aside, unheeding. 

“ Chores,” said Redgold. “ Ann says 
that’s the way to peace and salvation . . . 
hard chores. I’ve never done ’em ; I’m 
going to start in now. Sitting beside Ann 
threading those beads in the studio. ... I’ve 
seen more of Ann these last few days than 
I’ve seen in my life. I didn’t know Ann. 
No one knows Ann . . . and Zuriel flutter- 
ing in and out with her thoughts inblown 
and utterly personal, and Mrs. Whistler with 
her tears and her Henry, and Stella with her 
Ferris and her letters . . . and the Marchesa 
sitting and watching for something amusing 
to happen ... all busy planning and per- 
fecting their own little patches . . . and 
Ann outside it all . . . above it all, living 
for other people, not in other people, that’s 
easy ; but for them and yet bravely carrying 


214 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


on a quiet, grave, dignified inner life of her 
own. Everybody chucking temperament 
about and Ann carrying hers shyly, shielded, 
brilliant. Ann is modest. When people 
come to her, she is there, hands eager and 
busy on their behalf, cool brain, resource 
. . . and because she does not blow her 
candles in the wind they do not know her 
shrine.” 

“ Ann,” said Isaacs, drawing him sharply 
back to earth, “ is a cute girl.” 

“ What Ann is,” pronounced Redgold, 
“ no one has yet found out.” 

Isaacs looked at him and marvelled that a 
man could walk so rapidly in one direction 
and yet be blind to the way he went. He 
walked towards Ann, yet he could not see 
that she was there waiting for him and had 
been from the first, or even that he went that 
way. He saw the artistic temperament as 
an outfit made for the obscuring of plain 
issues and was irritated accordingly. Dealing 
with men of Redgold ’s type gave him a 
feeling of inadequacy, like a metal worker 
suddenly called upon to handle blown glass. 
The method was the same, but required a 
totally unnatural and unpractised delicacy 
of touch. 


THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 215 

“ Ann doesn’t enter into this,” he men- 
tioned. 

“ She’s at the back of it,” said Redgold, 
worried. “ Lord knows where she got the 
money for Zuriel Whistler’s dress. She’s 
at the end of things. The shop is gone phut. 
I let her do it. . . . Ever since I’ve known 
Ann I’ve been letting her do things for us 
. . . watching her do things for other people 
and never recognising it . . . that’s what’s 
so ghastly. Sitting beside her working on 
Zuriel’s dress ... I suddenly saw her. 
If you can imagine sitting beside a very 
beautiful person in a train on a journey 
you’ve never been before and only noticing 
the scenery, and then just as the beauti- 
ful person gets out realising what you’ve 
missed.” 

“ Does Ann get out ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Redgold. “ Ann gets out 
because I come to you and we shan’t work 
together any more. We shan’t see each 
other very much either. I am going to give 
up the studio. Everything has made it easy 
for me to play. I’m not going to play any 
more. I’m going to pay my way. I’m going 
to take a studio where I shall be responsible 
for the rent.” 


2i6 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ Be quiet/’ said the Jew. “ I must think 
things out.” 

He saw things bluntly without scent, 
colour or romance. His summing was 
crude and kindly. Ann Charlton wanted 
Redgold and knew it. Redgold wanted Ann 
and did not know it. Unknown to each 
other they were prepared to sacrifice them- 
selves for each other. The discovery of that 
would be a great light in the darkness that 
obscured for Redgold at least their vital 
need of each other. It was a piquant situa- 
tion. He stole a look at Redgold and went 
on with his silent inventory. He was pulling 
strings ... he felt suddenly as titanic as 
fate, mellow with gratification. He could 
take them both and give them to each other. 
Through their commercial fealty to him they 
would discover their sentimental fealty to 
each other. It was a splendid, intriguing, 
beguiling idea. Would Ann tell Redgold 
first, or Redgold Ann ? He speculated, 
twinkling. Queer how one was born with a 
taste for self-sacrifice . . . queer. . . . He’d 
never noticed it himself . . . but all these 
blown-glass people with crinkled tempera- 
ments, they had it. 

His voice sounded unctuous benison. 


THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 217 

“ ril rough out the contract. There’s a 
three-year one in my desk. Fll skim it 
over.” 

He smiled as he reached for Ann Charlton’s 
contract. 


XX 


THE GREAT PINK DANCE 

T he pink of the first rose, the pink of 
the latest bonbon, a pink pierrette, a 
blush rose, a powder-puff, a flamingo 
with the dainty legs of a chorus girl, thou- 
sands of pink lights everywhere . . . rosy, 
intimate, warm, cheering, beguiling ... a 
corner of the world playing madly in a perma- 
nent sunset, the fantastic consciousness of 
having transfixed for a moment an hour that 
has been transitory and fleeting since the 
very beginning of the world. . . . Sometimes 
a vivid pink lime sweeping across the carnival 
and then vanishing as if it were a glowing 
ribbon snatched up again into the star- 
spangled romantic heavens, such was the 
delicious magic, the novelty of Isaacs’s Pink 
Dance. . . . Sometimes the ribbon of lime- 
light trailed across the river, stung to life 
hundreds of close-packed punts and skiffs, 
flashed in hundreds of eager watching eyes 

218 


THE GREAT PINK DANCE 


219 


and yet more eyes in the dark, thick fringe of 
people on the opposite bank ; but when the 
light dropped these unheeded spectators 
into darkness that was the deeper for its 
sudden advent they ceased to exist for the 
rosy dancers in their rosy setting. Even for 
those with memories packed with Victory 
Balls and Three Art Balls this was something 
new ; even those whose life was a search 
devoted to novelty and new settings sur- 
rendered to this new fairyland, permitted 
this hour to close round them, to shut out 
yesterday and efface to-morrow. 

Isaacs walked among the crowd and smiled. 
He was the Pied Piper of Hamelin in rose 
du Barri tights and doublet and a little 
pointed, scolloped cap. Twelve plush mice 
hung by their tails from his waistbelt. He 
carried his little silver flute. To those of the 
dancers he knew he nodded and said, “ It 
goes. My word, it goes ! ’’ and glided on in 
his long pink, pointed slippers. 

High up in the trees, so high that magic 
hands must surely have placed them there, 
glinted little pink fairy lamps like fallen stars. 
Low on the earth like jewelled glow-worms 
glinted the little pink lamps. They festooned 
on the rose bushes like luminous fruit. 


220 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


The imagination of Isaacs the Jew had 
made a fairy tale come true. 

Nicholas Timothy said to Zuriel, ‘‘ That 
sunset that ran away from me at Delhi . . . 
it’s here to-night for you to walk on and play 
on. Isaacs put the wind up it, he had it 
surveyed and pinned down and fitted into 
his grounds just like oilcloth, before it had 
time to blink a sunbeam. Clever fellow, he 
caught it just as it slid into yesterday. Can’t 
you feel there’s no time here ... it isn’t 
to-day and it isn’t yesterday . . .it’s sunset 
time . . .it’s any time . . .it’s our time. 
Oh ! I love you for wearing this dress ! I 
love you for wearing this ! All the way down 
I was coming towards you . . . for a life- 
time of miles I have been coming towards 
you ... (a car’s the thing to take you 
into magic) and now I am parched and 
hungry and heartsore with my travelling. 
What are you going to do about it ? ” 

“ Oh ! Nicky, you are silly ! ” 

“ I don’t know what I am . . . but oh ! 
I like it ! ” 

Laughter in the trees among the pink 
lights, sighing in the trees below the pink 
lights, kisses blown by the little breeze back 
into yesterday, promises blown by the little 


THE GREAT PINK DANCE 


221 


breeze into to-morrow ; everything transient, 
nothing real. Lady Terence Timothy, mag- 
nificent in hooped skirt and powdered wig 
with patches on her fat cheeks, sweeping 
along beside the Pied Piper of Hamelin and 
saying, “ You have surpassed yourself,’’ over 
and over again — and the best band in London 
playing in their pink gnome suits and some- 
times glancing up as if they sought a sign 
from the fantastic figure with the plush mice 
tied to his waistbelt — and at a given moment 
they would cease their jazz and he would 
raise his little pipe and they would all dance 
... fat Lady Timothy, pierrot and pierrette, 
out into the darkness of the forgotten 
world. 

“ I’ve got pink fairies going round among 
the crowd outside . . .” said Isaacs ; “ that 
ought to bring in something. Two will do 
the boats and two the banks. Half Bray and 
Cookham and Marlow and Bourne End are 
outside.” 

“You are wonderful,” said Lady Timothy 
devoutly ; “ I am proud to have been 

associated with this ” ; and Sir Terence 
murmured in the apologetic whisper of a 
pugilist wandered into a Barrie play, “ You’ve 
got ’em, Isaacs ; you understand the game. 


222 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


Pink thrills ’em, blue chills ’em, and white 
makes ’em too refined.” 

The Scarlet Pimpernel dancing with a 
tulip, a marvellous pink butterfiy dancing 
with a pink ice cream, fairy tale and legend 
and history, romance and fiction jostling each 
other like the dream of an imaginative child 
come true . . . and like strings pulling them, 
the purr and swirl and zip and croon of the 
modern music’s fantastic measure. 

“ It’s a wonderful scene,” people said — 
those who danced, those who crouched in 
the hundreds of boats that shut down the 
cool glint of water, those who stood ten deep 
on the bank ; sometimes an expert hand 
trained the pink lime on the dancing figures 
on the floor that covered the whole lawn and 
to those who watched and marvelled in the 
darkness they seemed like spun-glass figures 
whirling in a rosy mist on glass. 

“ Thank you,” said Nicky to Zuriel, “ for 
taking me off my hands, I should have worn 
my polka-dotted heart on my sleeve for 
pierrettes to peck at, but now I have no heart, 
you have it. Zuriel, take care of it, dear.” 

“ Nicky, you’d laugh in heaven.” 

“ I hope so,” said Nicky. “ I’d feel like 
a new boarder always if I couldn’t laugh. 


THE GREAT PINK DANCE 


223 


I daren’t be solemn and passionate to-night, 
darling . . . not here and now in this 
atmosphere ... so Fm stemming things. 
My heart’s a cathedral, but if I opened the 
door here and let in the motley it would be 
desecration. To-morrow I shall go and 
choose rings ... we will gaze at bookcases, 
and while I unpack my soul for you and 
spread it about the landscape you’ll be 
secretly deciding whether you’ll have ruch- 
ings or gussets. To-morrow I am in broad- 
cloth, but to-night I am in shining armour. 
We live in a mad and inspiring world,” said 
Nicky. “ I never knew before how mad or 
how inspiring. When are you going to 
marry me ? ” 

“ I do not know,” mused Zuriel. 

“ But you like to think,” flashed the 
exultant Nicky. 

He hugged the consciousness of her pale, 
shining beauty to him like a hidden crown, 
knowing that it all gave him secret kingship 
in this carnival crowd. It gave him also a 
queer, delicious strength and power, so that 
he moved among the other dancers titanically 
with Zuriel in his arms, as if they were real 
people moving through shallow water full 
of Ashes. 


224 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


He found time to tell his mother while 
Zuriel danced with a pink Dick Whitting- 
ton. 

“ I want you to be glad,” he said. He 
knew instinctively her mind was open for 
this like a child’s mouth for an expected 
delicacy. He was too happy to fail her by 
feeding her with the unexpected. He saw 
in her eyes the satisfied closing of her mind 
on this morsel. She answered him just as 
he anticipated. “ I am glad if you are glad, 
dear boy.” He kissed her. To his father he 
said simply, “ IVe done it ! ” It was like 
running up his flag on some summit he had 
conquered. His father understood his mental 
attitude, he seemed quietly to salute the new 
flag like an old warrior who has unfurled his 
own flags in the past. “ All the luck, lad, all 
of the way.” 

They told Isaacs. Isaacs looked at them 
with his brilliant brown eyes like licked 
brandy balls. His look was light and amused, 
as if they were intriguing toys. 

“ Well ! ” he said, “ well ! ” and dismissed 
them like a busy man, back to their world of 
toyland ; then he caught Zuriel by the 
sleeve. “ So this is the gown ? ” he said with 
consuming interest. 


THE GREAT PINK DANCE 


225 


She became a model, a thing of lines ; as 
such he dismissed her with a little shrug. 
“ Incredible ! Incredible ! 

“ Good ? ’’ said Nicky. 

“ Incredibly bad ! ” boomed Isaacs. “ I 
wanted you to take the prize.’’ 

“ That was kind of you,” said Zuriel. 

“ It’s worth having,” said Isaacs ; “I 
know. I paid for it.” 

‘‘ Will she ? ” said Nicky. 

“ Will she ? ” mimicked Isaacs peevishly. 
“ In that ! Good God ! Not a chance. I’d 
have taken the front page of the Daily Mail,^ 
snorted Isaacs in their uncomprehending 
faces. ‘‘I’d have gone the whole hog. Now 
they can keep it.” 

Before he had vanished they dropped him 
out of their consciousness as lovers will all 
things that clutter the space of their together- 
ness. 

“ The world was so full until you came,” 
said Nicky, “ and now if you were to walk 
across that lawn and speak to someone else 
it would be empty until you returned to me. 
That frightens me ! ” 

Rosy figures whirling in a rosy world in a 
rosy mist, music plucking at their nerves, 
setting them tingling with delicious, un- 
Q 


226 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


bearably sweet discomfort, the hot, exhilarat- 
ing twinge when their eyes met. 

“ Shall we dance ? ” said Zuriel. 

“You know you don’t want to,” said 
Nicky. “You know that this hour will 
never come again, beloved, you know that 
you and I will never be the same to each 
other or, what is more important to us, quite 
what we are to ourselves this night. You 
know it.” 


XXI 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 

^ I ^HEY sat on still in the studio. It 
I seemed crowded with the stillness 
and the silence. Ann jostled among 
his thoughts in a queer way she had never 
done before. No one had ever seemed so 
near in all his life as Ann who sat ten yards 
away in silence and in shadow and did not 
speak. Bim did not move. To have moved 
would have been to break the sweet, foreign 
pressure of her image in his thoughts. 

Outside the garden dreamed motionless 
under the moon, shadows and the shivering 
blue of the moonlight raising themselves in 
sort of fantastic, exquisite brushwork, even 
to the silhouetted scribble of roofs against 
the skyline. 

“ Everything seems so cold and lonely 
to-night,’’ said Bim. “ I think of Zuriel 
dancing away, a live pink thing in a dead 
white world.” 


227 


228 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


Ann stirred. She seemed to stir in his 
secret thoughts too and create a faint warmth 
in their frightening coldness. 

“ Are you lonely because she is dancing 
and you are here ? ’’ said Ann. Her voice 
was quiet solicitude. 

“ Could you understand if I were ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Ann. 

“ Lately I have asked myself if there is 
anything you don’t understand. Will you 
understand when I tell you that I am fright- 
ened by a new loneliness. I try to find 
myself in it and I am lost. I am a frightened 
man, Ann Charlton. It seems a poor thing 
to be.” 

“ No one can break into your loneliness,” 
said Ann. “ But you will break out of it 
when the time comes ” — her heart beat. 
“ Break and I am here ! Oh ! break, and I 
am here ! ” She felt faint and sick with her 
awful tenderness and yearning over him, 
almost like a mother with a wounded child. 

Bim could not see her, but the print of 
her face was in the darkness of the studio ; 
it was in the dreaming magic of the garden ; 
the print of her face was upon the world. 

“ When Zuriel comes back she will be 
gone,” said Ann. 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 229 

“ She was never there, not where you 
mean. She was a picture ; all my life has 
been pictures. I thought of myself as one, 
too, and find I am a real man wanting real 
things . . . real people.” 

“ Why don’t you smoke ? ” soothed Ann. 

He lit his pipe. 

“ Ann,” he said, “I’m going to pay you 
back the money you lent me for Zuriel’s 
dress. It was the beginning. I stand 
braced. I feel that. My muscles aren’t 
flabby. I’m going to spring, I know where 
and how. One dopes oneself with poetry 
and dreams, one goes to plays and one reads 
books that sweep away all the furniture 
you’ve arranged in your mind to live with, 
that make it comfortable to live. It isn’t any 
good. Do one’s own little job hard, hard — 
that’s healthy, that’s sane — ^find the joy in 
the super-polish you give your boots, the 
steadying self-respect that lies behind paying 
your own rent. I’m sure of that. I’ve done 
with toys, Ann, except for my leisure hours. 
I’m going to work and all that it implies. 
I’m going to get the last ounce out of it and 
out of myself.” He paused. “I’m sick 
of backyards. I’m coming out into the 
world.” 


230 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ I think you’re right,” she approved 
quietly. 

“I’m sure I am. What has shaken me up, 
Ann ? It’s something I can’t see or define 
or name. I can only feel it, feel that I have 
been shaken.” 

There were ex-soldiers singing madrigals 
in the road beyond the high guarded walls, 
in the world beyond this world where he 
and Ann Charlton sat alone, and he tried to 
understand that something he could not 
define, but which was sweet and wonderful 
and which he feared alarmingly to lose. 

“ When Zuriel marries young Nicholas 
Timothy it will be like a lovely picture taken 
away ; I shall miss it, but only with my 
eyes ; besides, I shall be busy. I love the 
sound of that. I am going to give up this 
studio as soon as Stella joins Ferris. I 
believe they will go out together early next 
month, after all. I am going to be quite on 
my own.” 

“ But, my dear, you haven’t any money 
to start.” She was hugging the thought of 
her contract with Isaacs like a gem . . . 
suddenly . . . suddenly she would flash it 
across the darkness and see the joy and relief 
in his eyes. 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 231 

“ You haven’t either, Ann.” He hugged 
the thought of his secret contract with 
Isaacs too ; like a gem it was in his eyes, 
but he w’ould not throw it to her, needing 
nothing for himself. He would take it to 
her . . . and himself ; and the darkness 
between them would fade away and there 
would be himself and Ann face to face. He 
saw that suddenly, miraculously, like a vision 
vouchsafed and trembled before it. He 
was suddenly conscious, magnificently con- 
scious, of a destination, whereas before there 
had only been halting-places for his aimless 
drifting. 

“ Ann,” he said. “ You’ve always been 
poised . . . ready to jump straight to success, 
but you hadn’t any landing-ground. What 
would you do if you suddenly saw it below 
you } ” He had a feeling of building it for 
her as he spoke, safe and tried and adequate. 

“ Jump,” said Ann, and he felt her smil- 
ing ; it seemed to come to him like warmth 
and light in the darkness, that feeling of the 
invisible smile. 

Someone was playing in one of the sur- 
rounding houses ; it made a brushing butter- 
fly sound in the still studio. In the dark 
faces of the London houses tiny yellow eyes 


232 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


were lifted, myriads of tiny yellow eyes 
everywhere. The moon made a road on the 
earth ; across the garden right up to the 
studio door she built it and walked there, 
silver shod and luminous. 

He was arrayed in a great and shining 
gladness the like of which he had never 
guessed at and never known ; he was 
panoplied with a peace and happiness that 
passed all understanding. 

“ Ann,” he said, “ have you really been 
there all the time ? ” 

He, who had made servants of his words 
all his life, abject slaves who at his bidding 
danced to stately measure or capered clown- 
ishly, found they had deserted him. 

“Yes,” said Ann, misunderstanding, “ but 
I didn’t speak because I thought you were 
thinking. What are you going to do when 
you give up this studio and Stella is married ? 
What branch of work are you going to devote 
yourself to ? Who will look after you when 
Stella goes, cook and so on ? ” 

He was tenderly amused at her. He had 
the feeling of standing in the wings attired 
as Prince Charming, waiting for his cue, 
glittering bravely while he gave his mind 
to mundane things. 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 233 

“ Fll manage/’ he said. “ It’s you I want 
to talk about, you and your future and what 
it holds for you. You could do big things.” 

“ Never,” said Ann. “ But I could do 
little things well.” 

She smiled happily to herself ; she was 
cosy and warm with the thought of the 
moment that was coming, the road that she 
had cleared for him by her contract revealed, 
straight and broad and happy, leading up 
into the promise of to-morrow. She waited 
for the moment of revelation as if she were 
a firefly or some bright phosphorescent thing 
waiting for the darkness to detach itself 
from its background and become a living 
entity. 

They had both forgotten Zuriel. She had 
passed from a raison d'etre for their actions 
into a mere peg on which they looped the 
wonders of the future they each carried 
secretly — supported them because they were 
too heavy with preciousness to bear alone. 
She had passed from actuality to symbolism. 

“ Poor Mrs. Whistler,” said Ann. “ She’s 
like a cat on hot bricks.” Yet Mrs. Whistler 
was not real to either of them ; she was like 
a figure passing the windows of their little 
secret world. 


234 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ And the Marchesa watching,” said Bim ; 
and he thought, “ Shall I hug it or shall I 
tell her that her future is safe ? ” And he 
held it, because the feel of it was so good, the 
best thing his life had ever known, an 
emotion so real that all others lay about like 
open packing-cases suddenly proved empty. 

“ The Marchesa knows who her father is,” 
said Ann ; “I feel that. It is the final 
surprise before the fall of the curtain and 
she waits for that. She sees it in the fire and 
smiles — ^you can watch her. It was the desire 
for the final thrill that brought her here.” 

“ I am curious myself,” said Bim. “ It 
seems so funny for a woman not to know 
what her own husband is. One knows what 
the Timothys are, the little tight iron railings 
that surround their imaginations and keep 
back the memories of their own humble 
beginnings. There isn’t room for anyone 
doubtful to creep in because they must let 
the acknowledgment of their own littleness 
come too . . . and they won’t.” Then he 
brushed his stupid, littering speculations 
away and came back to the thoughts he had 
littered purposely for the joy of finding them 
again. “ Ann, I’d have given the world to 
do something for you.” 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 235 

“ You have,” said Ann very low. “ You 
have ... I was tight-clenched and blind 
and stupid when I met you, a thing living 
dully in a closed chamber, and you opened 
the doors and windows, you let the sunlight 
in. It doesn’t matter that I must stay in 
my little closed chamber ... I know there 
is a world outside ... I see things go by, 
I hear the lilt of things, I catch the glint of 
them.” 

“ Am I in the world outside ? ” he said 
huskily. 

“ You are, Bim.” Her voice was level. 

“ Suppose I was as lonely outside as you 
were in .^ ” 

“You couldn’t be, my dear ; you find 
bevies of playmates, new ideas to toss about. 
When I see you you are always scurrying, 
laughing, busy.” 

Now she seemed to him like a hidden 
flower in the darkness, a grave white flower, 
somehow shy, not a flower to pluck, but a 
flower to stay near, a flower that did not die. 

“ Ann,” he said, “ why do you hide from 
me ? ” 

“ It is because it is dark,” said Ann. 
“ Let us have the lights on.” 

His love was running towards her. He was 


236 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


not carrying it, as he always thought men did ; 
it carried him. His self-sacrifice was not 
something he was giving her. It was some- 
thing she had given him, something precious 
and personal. 

‘‘ I ought to be going,” said Ann. “ I 
can’t know what has happened to-night. 
Zuriel won’t be home until early morning. 
I’ll come in early . . . the Marchesa will 
tell me what has happened, she is sitting up 
to see the play out.” 

“ Ann,” he said, “ you’re new to me and 
I’ve new things to say. I want to say them 
now. This isn’t the end, it’s the beginning 
in lots of ways.” 

“ But Bim . . . there’s Zuriel ! ” She 
was brushing back water he offered her to 
quench an unbearable thirst because she 
could not believe it was anything but a 
mirage ; but how was he to know that ? 
“ This,” said Ann in a queer, suffering voice, 
“ is a fairy tale and it can’t come true . . . 
it can’t come true ! ” 

“ It is true,” said Bim. 

He gripped her hand. Mrs. Whistler came 
running down the path. They could hear 
her panting like the white rabbit in “ Alice.” 
“ Oh, dear ! Oh, dear ! ” They received 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 237 

her, hands gripped. She was crying. Her 
mouth worked loosely. Butting in on their 
world she came with a sense of shock. 

“ Look ! ’’ she said. “ After everything ! 
After everything! Oh! my goodness, 
look ! ’’ 

She held up the pink pearl dress. In her 
unsteady hand it writhed in the moonlight 
as if it felt the holder’s shame. 

“ Nicholas Timothy sent her another 
... a pink pierrette’s dress, and asked her 
to wear it. I found his note. Oh ! she’s 
got him, it was as soppy . . . you’d never 
think to look at him ! The hours you’ve 
put into it . . . the hours. Oh ! my dears, 
if there was anything I could do ! I can’t 
tell you how I feel. How could she ! How 
could she ! ” 

Hands gripped they stared at it. It was a 
symbol outraged. They felt humiliated, as 
if a stake on which they had high-keyed 
themselves to sacrifice was cut down unused 
for clothes-pegs before their eyes. 

“ Ungrateful,” sobbed Mrs. Whistler, “ not 
like her father ! Oh ! I can’t tell you how 
I feel ... I can’t tell you. I could bury 
my head. Left on the bed . . . just like an 
odd glove . . . that’s Zuriel.” 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


238 

They looked at the dress ; it seemed to 
palpitate and quiver on Mrs. Whistler’s arm 
like a heap of jewels with something under- 
neath that was ashamed and frightened and 
wished to hide. 

“ If she’d stolen something I couldn’t have 
felt as bad . . . but you, Ann, signing on 
with that Jew, so’s Bim could make it . . . 
all for Zuriel and Bim . . . and then this 
. . . just left. Just like that. All laid out 
and only her pink shoes and stockings.” 

Bim and Ann looked at each other’s white 
faces in the moonlight. They stood where 
the moon finished her magic road, finished 
surely that all things might stand still in 
darkness just for one minute while they two 
found each other. Ann read his face as if 
it were music. Her voice was threaded with 
tears strung on laughter. 

“You signed too,” she said ; “ you signed 
too.” 

“ For you, Ann,” he said. “ For you.” 

“ Both of you ! ” sobbed Mrs. Whistler. 
“ Both of you ! Doesn’t that make it awful ! 
Oh ! I could fly away to heathen parts for 
very shame. Only her pink shoes and stock- 
ings gone . . . why, I couldn’t have felt 
worse if she’d gone in them alone. I couldn’t 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 239 

feel worse than I do this very minute, and 
this dress would have got the prize, and 
you’d have been in the Daily Mirror to- 
morrow and everything. It’s too dreadful.” 

She was like a thin voice wailing in a cold 
wilderness without ; they only heeded her 
because she made the warmth and compact- 
ness of their own little heaven more complete. 

“You were at the back of it, Ann,” said 
Bim, “ and I did not know.” 

“You were at the back of it and I knew,” 
said Ann. 

“ It comes like a divine revelation,” said 
Bim. “Oh, Ann!” 

Mrs. Whistler, blind to their blindness, 
babbled tearful suggestions. “ It ought to 
take the first prize. Oh 1 it did ought to. 
If I get Josephine into it will you let her 
wear it ? You can shove a Frenchwoman 
into anything. Will you, now 1 There’s 
dears ! and I shan’t feel so bad. Nobody’ll 
know she’s the Marchesa’s maid. Nobody 
knows what any Frenchwoman is 1 It ought 
to take the prize. You ought to have the 
credit. You really did. Josephine’ll get 
into it. They’re all stays, those girls, she’ll 
compress. Do let me 1 ” 

They brushed her clamour away. She 


240 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


could not see with her middle-aged eyes the 
world that lay where the moonlight ended, 
the world in which they had already turned 
their backs on her. 

“ Oh, Ann ! ’’ said Bim, “ that you could 
do a thing like that. Three years, my 
love ! ” 

“ Three years ! ” said Ann, as if it was a 
token of immortality. 

In their new mental world they found 
freedom in the very thought of prison, they 
hugged their chains preciously lest they 
should break and condemn them to the 
vagueness and the emptiness and the pur- 
poselessness of a life where they had been 
free to do as they wished. So Discipline 
entered into Bim’s life, not as Isaacs had 
prophesied, a physician of the soul marching 
brassily to martial music, but peace-giving, 
mind-healing as a respite from pain. 

‘‘ Shall I get Josephine ? ” said Mrs. 
Whistler, “ shall I ? ” 

They looked at her. The dress was dead 
in her arms. It was not even a symbol, the 
deserted statue to a great deed. It was 
nothing. She was nothing. Bim looked 
back at her out of his new world — kindly, 
humorously, inexorably. 


WHERE THE MOONLIGHT ENDED 241 

“ Oh, my dear ! ” he said ; “ can’t you 

see ? ” 

And Mrs. Whistler did see. She saw a 
door closed upon her. She did not beat her 
fists upon it or make any sign. She knew 
that she had once been a pilgrim there. She 
smiled. She stood outside the door in the 
moonlight as if it had been the grave of 
youth and beauty. Gravely and courteously 
she dropped her visiting card through the 
crack of memory ... a little, mumbled, 
funny prayer . . . the visiting card of the 
middle-aged. 


XXII 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 

F idget, fidget, fidget. The click of 
knitting needles, the crisping of the 
leaves of a library book, the swish of 
wind in the silk curtains at the open window, 
bellying them in like tipped crinolines, the 
crackle of the fire, the thin ping of a mosquito 
frantically wooing the covered electric light. 

“ It’s so late, Marchesa, aren’t you going 
to bed ? ” 

“ Dear Mrs. Whistler, I am not tired.” 
She did not look it. Her eyes, her gems, 
the exquisite paste buckles on her square- 
toed shoes glinted and gleamed, even the 
cascade of particularly priceless lace at her 
throat seemed suddenly startled into quiver- 
ing animation ; she had more than ever the 
absurd air of an ancient queen for whose 
especial diversion masquerade had been 
arranged. She even betrayed a royal im- 
patience to be diverted. 

242 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 


243 


‘‘ Do you wonder that I want to know 
how things have progressed with Zuriel ? 
Is it so amazing ? I had a hand in the affair. 
Had I not lent you this house she could never 
have met young Timothy. In your own 
maternal anxiety be patient, my good friend, 
with the vagaries of age.” 

“I’m thinking what you’ll look and feel 
like to-morrow morning.” 

The clock struck one, another clock struck, 
a church clock chimed it, another church 
clock farther away — it died like a whispered 
warning. 

“ I could no more be a burglar than I could 
fly,” said Mrs. Whistler. “ Why I’m quite 
creepy sitting here with you quite lawfully 
and respectably. Oh, dear ! I wish Zuriel 
would come.” 

“Tell me again about Ann and Bim and 
how you found the pink dress ? ” 

“ They’re sure to come and see you them- 
selves to-morrow morning, and the less said 
about the pink dress the better. Bim ’ll tell 
you all about it. He’s got the special licence 
look. Funny, he and Nicholas and Ferris 
. . . they’re all a little bit on the ginger side. 
Well ! anything’s better than a blue-chinned 
man who wants boiling shaving water twice 


244 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


a day ; theyTe worse than a white dog in 
London. Every woman, no matter how 
romantically inclined she may be, knows 
homework lies behind marrying a man, but 
she doesn’t want to have to keep kissing it 
and reminding herself. 1 know a girl who 
married a man with black eyes . . . they 
looked black at night. Oh, lovely ! Well, 
she’d have gone off with a blue-eyed man if 
he hadn’t had a geyser put in.” 

“ An entirely original point of view,” 
chuckled the Marchesa. 

“ To-morrow,” said Poppy Whistler, knit- 
ting furiously, “ I shall be in Margate.” 

“It is inevitable if Nicholas and Zuriel 
have become engaged that he will want to 
arrange a luncheon party ... his people 
and you. He sails to-morrow evening. 
Zuriel will want to see him off.” 

“ No luncheon party for me. Zuriel can 
see young Timothy off. I’m going to see 
my Henry in and that’s that. I wrote and 
told the girl to be there early. Now won’t 
you go to bed, Marchesa ? I’ll run up and 
tell you if they are or not the very minute 
they arrive. You’ll feel a rag to-morrow.” 

“ I’ll stay,” said the Marchesa. 

Utter silence, then the measured tread of 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 


245 


a policeman’s passing footsteps, the distant 
grunting rattle of an old taxi. 

“ Would you like a glass of hot milk ? ” 

“ I need no other stimulant than that 
which I am obtaining.” 

“ Well, whatever it is, it suits you,” said 
Poppy Whistler ; “I’ve never seen you 
look better.” 

“ One feels philosophical at this hour.” 

“ And cold,” said Mrs. Whistler ; “ cold 
about the feet and the ears and the backbone.” 

Utter silence, unbroken. A clock striking 
the half-hour. More silence. A clock 
striking the quarter to. 

“ Now, if you would have just a cup of 
Bovril. It wouldn’t take a minute.” 

“ I’ll guarantee I am fresher than Lady 
Timothy.” 

“ I never see her but what I feel a 
grudge against nature,” said Poppy Whistler. 
“ Look at the length some people have to 
carry their fat about on. We’re the same 
size round, but people call me a podge and 
she’s a fine woman, because she’s run up a 
bit more. My goodness ! I can’t settle to 
anything to-night. I wish Zuriel would 
have married Bim Redgold. He’s more my 
style than Nicholas Timothy, and he hasn’t 


246 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

got a mother. I could have been a mother 
to him.’' 

“ Well, you can be a mother to Nicholas.” 

“ You know perfectly well I can’t, Mar- 
chesa, not with the mother he’s got. If the 
mother and mother-in-law are the same 
class it may be all right, but if they’re as 
different as Lady Timothy and I one of them 
has got to be an institution . . . and it’ll be 
me.” 

Another long, long silence. 

“ My goodness, what’ll I say to Henry if 
she does marry him } It comes on me like 
the thought of an operation, truly it does.” 

‘‘ Very few daughters marry the men their 
fathers would have chosen, if that is any 
consolation.” 

“ I don’t know that it is, Marchesa.” 

‘‘ Can’t you stand back and look at things.” 

“ I cannot. Every time I think of Henry 
I slip forward and hurt myself.” 

‘‘ You must remember that Mr. Whistler 
may even be pleased. It’s an excellent 
marriage from the worldly point of view.” 

“ Henry isn’t worldly. He always gave 
me the bit of the morning paper with the 
financial news on every day.” 

“ You’ll have all the fun of choosing her 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 


247 

trousseau. She’ll want lots and lots and lots 
of white things.” 

“ She won’t want me. Nicholas’ll prob- 
ably help her. That’s what seems to happen 
nowadays. One thing, they could choose 
all the things girls used to blush and dream 
about off the wax figures in Regent Street 
windows inside five minutes. When I 
married Henry he thought heaven kept my 
stockings up.” 

They spoke little after that. Now and 
again Mrs. Whistler threw phrases after the 
interminable hours as if they were missiles 
by which she could speed them on their way. 
A thin light, like cold water, began to trickle 
into the room. 

“ It’s like waiting for someone to be born 
or die,” said Mrs. Whistler. “ Oh ! I wish 
you’d let me get you a cup of tea.” 

“It is a long time since I have seen a 
dawn.” 

“ I can’t bear them,” mentioned Mrs. 
Whistler. “ Nasty cold things.” 

The stars were fading, a chilly little early 
morning wind fluttered busily about the 
garden, shaking the curtains like a fussy 
housemaid . . . then suddenly in the awaking 
world there were footsteps on the gravel. 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


248 

The Marchesa laughed. 

Mrs. Whistler stared at her. It was young, 
incongruous laughter ; coming from so 
venerable and enigmatic a source it seemed 
disembodied ; it was malicious, delighted, 
anticipatory mirth. It roused a resentment 
in Poppy Whistler that surprised her by its 
strength. There came the crash of a hastily 
opened door. 

“ My goodness ! ’’ ejaculated Mrs. Whist- 
ler sharply. I hope they save the pieces ! ” 

They trooped in. Lady Timothy, Nicholas 
and Zuriel. 

The Marchesa ceased to laugh. She 
watched them intently. The prologue had 
begun. 

“ Mother,” said Zuriel — she took her cue, 
flung her words high towards the gallery 
gods, one would have said she paused for the 
applause — “ Nicholas and I are engaged.” 

The Marchesa accepted it as a hardened 
playgoer might accept a threadbare situation 
and a well-worn cliche ; her face merely 
registered recognition. 

Lady Terence advanced and extended 
both hands to Poppy Whistler. It might 
have been and probably was rehearsed. 
Poppy Whistler upset the pose by ignoring 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 


249 


one hand and shaking the other like a sports- 
man. She had no flair for the dramatic 
situation. 

“ Well, that’s nice now, I’m sure,” she 
said. “ We’ve been wondering and wonder- 
ing, knowing Nicholas sails to-morrow. Now 
wouldn’t everyone like a nice hot cup of 
tea ? ” 

Zuriel looked at her and felt her heart 
contract a little. It was in the little round 
bunch of a woman to be able to express her 
finest and deepest emotions only in the 
commonplace terms of service. She remem- 
bered her through the raids at Margate 
. . . just like this, riding her fears with a 
tight rein, practical in her expressions of 
sympathy. ‘‘ Won’t anyone have a cup of 
tea ? Now won’t anyone ? ” 

The Marchesa, divining the disappoint- 
ment to Lady Terence’s overgrown and care- 
fully staked conventions said, ‘‘ My very, 
very best congratulations, Lady Timothy. 
Dear children ! ” 

It was the voice from the throne, patronis- 
ing, drawling. 

Lady Timothy turned to her eagerly. She 
saw the Marchesa as a title with the old 
woman attached ; as such she venerated her. 


250 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


The Marchesa’s voice gave the engagement 
that Princess Mary-Lascelles’ touch she felt 
had been so lamentably lacking. 

“ An only son ! ’’ said her ladyship to the 
Marchesa. 

‘‘ An only daughter ! ’’ snapped Mrs. 
Whistler. 

“ Nobody,” said Nicholas, “ has kissed 
me or anything.” 

“ Meaning me ? ” said Mrs. Whistler on 
her way to the kitchen. 

“ Meaning you,” said Nicholas. 

She put her warm little arms round his 
neck and kissed him heartily. Through her 
eyes he read her heart, all the kindly things, 
the homely kindly things that couldn't find 
the words to ride on. 

“ Good old Mother Bun ! ” he muttered. 
“ Good old Mother Bun ; I’ll be good to 
her.” 

Zuriel followed her mother into the 
kitchen. 

‘‘ You haven’t said anything to me,” she 
pointed out, smiling. 

“ I’ve only old-fashioned things to say,” 
said her mother. “ They’d sound funny 
about you. You’re my girl. Zuriel . . . 
can’t you know . . . can’t you know how I 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 


251 


wish and what I wish . . . everything for 
you ? I don’t want to cry. It’s been a try- 
ing evening . . . waiting with the Marchesa 
and finding that dress. My goodness ! 
when I found that dress I thought I should 
have died.” 

“ Nicholas sent me one he saw when his 
mother took him to see hers. He liked it. 
He asked me to wear it.” 

“ Single-minded,” said Mrs. Whistler, 
“ that’s what you are. Bim and Ann . . . 
they’re engaged too.” 

“ Oh ! how splendid. We ought to have 
a lunch somewhere to-morrow. We’ve the 
ring to get and Nicky has got to call for 
some Shantung suits that didn’t fit. I don’t 
know how we’ll get it in, but we’ve got to 
. . . we’ve simply got to ! ” She rushed 
out of the kitchen excitedly, her mother 
heard her gay voice dancing in the lounge. 
“ Me for Margate,” she muttered. “ Me 
for Margate.” 

The Marchesa sat shrivelled and im- 
mobile by the fire when she brought the tea 
in. The others were chatting excitedly, 
throwing restaurant names at one another : 
the Ritz, the Carlton, Princes’, the Savoy. 

“ We’re going to,” said Zuriel. “ Lady 


252 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


Terence and you, Sir Terence, Nicky and 
I, Bim and Ann.” 

“ And I ! ” said the Marchesa. ‘‘ Am I 
not invited ? ” 

“You can go instead of me,” said Mrs. 
Whistler ; “ me for Margate.” 

Lady Timothy said gently, “It is a lunch 
to celebrate your daughter’s engagement.” 
Mrs. Whistler felt as if she had pulled a 
scrubbing brush out of her pocket at a royal 
reception and Lady Timothy was trying to 
restore it for her. 

“ My husband gets back to-morrow.” 

“ Then he can come to the lunch and we 
shall meet him. That will be enchanting.” 

“ He doesn’t get back till evening,” said 
Mrs. Whistler hastily. 

“ Then you can go down after the lunch,” 
said Lady Timothy. 

“ Of course,” echoed Zuriel. 

“ You’ve got to come,” admonished Nicky, 
“ and the Marchesa too.” 

But his mother, delighted, was already 
chirruping away at the ancient title. It lent 
atmosphere to have an old Italian aristocrat 
at the little festival. It would look well in 
the papers. The Marchesa began gracefully 
to retract. She had spoken too hastily. She 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 


253 


was old, feeble, these great places with their 
noise, their crowds, disturbed and bewildered 
her ; they saddened her with the ghosts of 
her lost youth. “ Dear Lady Timothy, 
forgive me ... I spoke hastily. If there 
was some little quiet place where one could 
rejoice with these young people in their 
happiness.” 

Poppy Whistler felt the old lady was 
making planned moves in a planned game, 
and yet her reason derided the idea. 

“ There’s Bampton’s,” reiterated Lady 
Timothy. 

“ Wonderfully good,” murmured the Mar- 
chesa ; “no kickshaws . . . plain, good, the 
very best food. It is all I dare eat now. Not 
the atmosphere for this little affair . . . 
busy men . . . talk of sales and finance and 
business. No, no, I rescind.” 

“ Dear Marchesa, if you hadn’t lent 
Zuriel’s mother this house she and my boy 
would never have met. Nicky . . . think 
of somewhere quiet and good.” 

“ Besides,” the Marchesa ’s voice was 
mellow, “ dear Ann Charlton and Bim . . . 
not the clothes for those other places per- 
haps.” 

“ There’s Zane’s,” said Nicky. “ There’s 


254 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


the Cupola . . . there’s the Frivol, and 
there’s Conrad’s . . . Conrad’s is the best.” 

The Marchesa’s eyes were like little lights 
suddenly lit. 

“ My father,” she said, “ swore by Con- 
rad’s and his father before him ; the best 
food and the best service in London, a house 
of great traditions, the meeting-ground of 
epicures.” 

“ It isn’t really a young man’s place,” said 
Nicky. I’ve been there . . . it’s full of 
generals and judges.” 

“ My husband wanted to go there the other 
day,” said Lady Timothy. “ He’s never 
been. He was particularly anxious to go. 
They have a European reputation. He says 
they have the best site in the West End.” 

‘‘ I know the head waiter,” mumbled the 
Marchesa. ‘‘ I could book a table ; there 
are funny tables and chairs, carved oak of a 
real period and valuable. I could telephone. 
There is a horseshoe table . . . perhaps we 
would have that.” 

“ Would you ? ” said Lady Timothy 
eagerly. ‘‘ Nicky, wouldn’t that be nice 
now ? ” 

The room was vivid with daylight now. 
In it they looked garish stragglers in their 


THE MARCHESA WAITS 


255 

pink fancy dresses ; the atmosphere had 
died as Nicky had said it would. 

“ The chauffeur will be cold/’ said Lady 
Terence. ‘‘ Of course one needn’t be careful 
of them now, like one had to be in the war.” 

Nicky put his arms round Zuriel and her 
mother and led them out into the crispness 
of the new day. Lady Timothy stayed to 
make final arrangements with the Marchesa 
about the lunch. 

“ So good of you,” they heard her say, 
“ so good of you,” and the Marchesa’s 
polite drawl : 

“ Not at all, dear Lady Timothy, not at 
all.” 


XXIII 


LIZZIE INTERVENES 

P eople outside hurrying in their spring 
clothes and their spring faces and their 
spring moods . . . hurrying in the 
hot sunshine that was heavy and gold 
as the fallen pollen of the early summer 
flowers . . . shooting gaily past the windows 
with the same jerkiness and meaninglessness 
as the tin animals in a cheap shooting 
gallery. 

Dappled golden sunshine in the lounge, 
stippling Zuriel’s hair under her grey hat 
with the curling ospreys. Oh ! Mother, 
the car is there ! ’’ 

“ My goodness ! What it is to have fat 
wrists ! This glove’ll never fasten. Mind 
you. I’m going to catch the three o’clock to 
Margate.” 

“ Of course, of course ! Do hurry, 
darling.” 

Bim and Ann quite silent, standing to- 
256 


LIZZIE INTERVENES 


257 


gether, untouched by the unquiet round 
them. Ann in a blue-grey stockinette, for 
which she had raided Marshall and Snel- 
grove’s that morning, and an exquisite blue- 
grey hat trimmed with silver wheat, a model 
for which she had paid fifteen pounds. She 
was still thrilled, exhilarated and frightened 
by her own extravagance ; these emotions 
gave her colour, animation and charm. 

“ You lovely thing,’’ Bim kept whispering. 
“ You lovely thing.” 

Mrs. Whistler swathed in biscuit colour 
rolled agitatedly, like some fat little chrysalis, 
about the lounge. 

“ Oh dear ! Oh dear ! I’m all of a dither. 
I shall sit next to old Timothy at lunch and 
I am sure I shall say something about his 
rotten food. When I’m nervous I generally 
find myself quoting Henry, most wives do.” 

‘‘ He never mentions the Tiny Tea- 
Tables when he’s out with his wife,” Zuriel 
reassured her. “ Oh ! where is the Mar- 
chesa ? ” 

“ Here,” said the sprightly old lady, and 
descended on them in a dove-coloured 
bonnet and a dove-coloured cape edged with 
blue fox . . . the sunshine crept up her as 
if it were a child’s timid exploring fingers. 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


258 

There was a sharp knock at the door. 

Josephine wheeled to open it. 

On the doorstep in the sunshine stood a 
red-faced girl in a rust-red coat. 

“Lizzie!” said Mrs. Whistler. “My 
goodness 1 Lizzie 1 ” 

Lizzie dragged her hostile eyes away from 
the short-skirted, high-heeled perkiness of 
the Marchesa’s French maid. 

“ Didn’t you get my telegram ? ” said 
Lizzie, goggling on the doorstep in the sun- 
shine. 

The Marchesa sat down and began to push 
on grey suMe gloves in a tired way. The 
charwoman trundling downstairs . . . The 
feel of the smooth orange envelope in her 
hand. . . . The thin flicker of it burning 
in the fire. . . . Returned spelt with two 
e’s. She looked at the sender. 

“You must have got it,” said Lizzie. “ It 
wasn’t returned.” 

“ Come on. Mother I Oh, Mother, come 
on 1 We can’t be late.” 

“ We shall be,” said the Marchesa ; her 
upper lip lengthened thinly with controlled 
irritation. If she should she would be sorry 
to be baulked of the party, now she had 
taken such unusual trouble. 


LIZZIE INTERVENES 


259 


“ What did you telegraph, Lizzie ? ” 

“ I telegraphed to say the master was 
home. He’s been home days. I thought 
you’d got the ’flu or something, so I came 
up.” 

“ I’m going back with you,” said Mrs. 
Whistler, sheet-white, and Zuriel, equally 
white, cried : 

“ You’re not ! ” 

The Marchesa dragged Lizzie in, shut the 
door on the street, sent Josephine about her 
business, and snapped out, “ Girl, you’re a 
fool.” 

Lizzie looked her up and down and ad- 
dressed herself to her mistress. 

“ He’s going up to town same as usual 
. . . ten o’clock in the morning and same 
time back. I haven’t split on you, mum, 
I said you’d gone away for a few days. I’ve 
been looking after him same as if you was 
there, and he hasn’t noticed the camphor or 
anything, and aunt’s hens is laying again 
and I’ve had her eggs for him.” 

“ I’m going back with you, Lizzie.” 

“ Father won’t be home till past midnight. 
What’s the good ! Oh, please ! please 5 
Mother ! What can I tell Lady Timothy I 
It’ll seem so extraordinary. If she knows 


26 o 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


father’s home, he ought to be there, he ought 
to meet them all.” 

“ Zuriel’s right,” said the Marchesa. 

“ I think she is,” said Ann. 

“ Oh, my goodness ! ” said Mrs. Whistler. 

They closed round the little biscuit- 
coloured dumpling. Their logic, their com- 
mon sense, their pleading boxed her in, an 
agitated, white-faced little figure. 

Lizzie stared about the lounge, on to the 
stairs ; out of sight, Josephine, with her little 
apron under her arm, so that it should not 
show white if anyone glanced up, listened. 
Lizzie without seeing her knew she was 
there. She wouldn’t wear a cap either 
. . . You wait and see . . . 

“ I’ve got Wiltshire back, number five, 
for his breakfast and everything,” said 
Lizzie. “ There isn’t anything for you to 
worry about, ’m.” 

From the middle of the little circle made 
by Zuriel, Ann, Bim and the Marchesa, came 
the droning voice of her mistress. 

“ You’re a good girl, Lizzie.” 

Lizzie hoped the cocky one on the stairs 
heard that. Then the Marchesa thrust 
something into her hand. It crackled. It 
had a five on. It lit a flame in her heart. 


LIZZIE INTERVENES 2631 

Go away,” said the Marchesa, very low^ 
They shoved her into the sunshine ; they' 
poured into the sunshine themselves. Zuriel 
was saying in a voice stemming back tears 
with difficulty, “ So late ! So late ! ” 

There was a great car ; they hustled Mrs. 
Whistler in almost as if they had just arrested 
her. She looked back at Lizzie. Lizzie 
gave her a dazzling five-pound smile ; to 
Mrs. Whistler who knew nothing of the five 
pounds it had the quality of radiant optimism. 
She drank it in eagerly. 

The car dashed off. 

It twinkled its way down the sunlit road 
and Lizzie looked after it. 

“ No one,” she murmured, “ said I won’t 
buy a hat before I go back to Margate.” 


XXIV 


PLAYING THE GAME 

I SHAN’T be able to eat a mouthful.” 
“ Nonsense ! Think of Zuriel ! ” 

“ I can’t think of anything but 

Henry.” 

An eye-aching dazzle of West End shops 
sweeping past the car windows, melting 
into each other, a crashing noise, a brain 
that could only think in little broken, 
startled bits. The Marchesa’s voice saying, 
‘‘ Conrad’s ! ” 

A strip of pavement, a thick door, the street 
shut out, and in the pool of silence into which 
they were plunged Sir Terence, his wife 
and Nicky waiting on rose du Barri seats in 
a little mahogany lounge, hushed and impor- 
tant as a Harley Street consulting-room. 
A flurry of greetings and apologies. The 
Marchesa, “ I was so excited that I got 
flurried.” 

Conrad’s. 


262 


PLAYING THE GAME 263 

Bim and Ann smiling their thanks for 
congratulations, deep smiles with long, strong 
roots, not the quickly painted on smiles of 
the Marchesa and Lady Terence. 

“ I feel sick,’’ Poppy Whistler said. 

“ Sal volatile,” whispered the Marchesa, 
passing her a little flask. 

Conrad’s. 

Another door. A religious atmosphere. 
One instinctively hushed one’s voice. One 
lost the sound of one’s feet in deep carpets — 
herself and Sir Terence first. Lady Timothy 
and the Marchesa, Ann and Bim, Zuriel and 
Nicky. High windows, high ceilings, candles 
burning behind pale shades on the oak 
panelling. Sir Terence’s fat voice patting it 
all. “ Quite an atmosphere ! Quite an 
atmosphere ! ” 

Conrad’s. 

No music. Conversational restraint, almost 
like people praying under a high ceiling, 
under the high windows, the glitter of glass 
and silver ware and china, pale flowers in 
long-stemmed vases — ^and Henry Whistler 
advancing down the aisle to meet them. 

Conrad’s. 

The first thing she noticed was that he 
was in evening dress in the morning . . . 


264 the CUCKOO’S NEST 

Henry who had never come down to break- 
fast without shaving first. 

“ Ah ! ” boomed Sir Terence. “ Here’s 
the head waiter.” 

His voice seemed to hit the walls and 
ceiling like a cathedral organ in a bathing 
box. Its dreadful echo beat down on her, 
numbing her. Her brain began to fumble a 
little shivering, shocked rosary of helpless 
“ My Gods ! ” 

The Marchesa’s eyes were flickering, 
flickering, laughing, laughing. Fun ! fun, 
awful fun for the Marchesa ! How would 
the puppets behave ! How would the play 
go on ! Conrad’s ! Conrad’s ! — ^the best 
show in town for the Marchesa. Stage- 
managed all by herself. The old lady’s 
eyes were sparkling. Poppy Whistler saw 
things in them . . . they were rooms with 
the blinds up. She peered into them. 
Should they caper for the Marchesa ? 

There was Sir Terence treating Henry like 
dirt. Well — no — not like dirt, but like an 
old waiter in evening dress, as if he had 
poked his head obediently out of another 
world to take Sir Terence’s orders. 

The Marchesa had known about Henry 
all the time . . . had been working up to this. 


PLAYING THE GAME 265 

Poppy looked at Zuriel. Zuriel was 
numbed, dithering, her lower jaw was work- 
ing, quivering. Zuriel was going to cry. 
Cry in front of the Marchesa. She wondered 
if her face was the same colour as ZuriePs 
... so different from Ann and Bim and the 
Timothys, who knew nothing, like Albinos 
at a niggers’ festival . . . but Henry was 
fine, he carried his backbone, his eyes, the 
curve of his mouth . . . straight. “ This 
way. Sir Terence.” 

Conrad’s. 

She had met Henry’s eyes. 

They were round the table. She gripped 
Zuriel’s hand and swore for the first time in 
her life. 

“ Don’t be a damn fool. Play the 
game ! ” 

She did not know what game. She spoke 
blindly, she smiled blindly. Noblesse oblige 
meant nothing to her, a French name for a 
French dish. She swallowed her cocktail. 
Out of it flowered a smile that was as cool 
and remote as the Marchesa ’s own. 

Henry was writing on his pad, young 
waiters hovered in the distance to do his 
bidding, acolytes. His wife thought — now 
he is writing dishes and it’s the same hand, 


266 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


the same writing that wrote “ My dear wife 
last week. 

Henry could play the game. He was trim, 
immaculate . . . every inch a little gentle- 
man in his evening dress-suit in the sunlight. 

“To my new daughter, Zuriel ! Sir 
Terence raised his glass. 

Henry must have heard that ! He must 
have. She wondered if it burnt his mind 
like the wine burnt her throat . . . biting 
it all the way down. Henry’s face was a 
mask. 

Conrad’s. 

Nicholas sensing things, knowing there 
was something there he couldn’t define, just 
like a blind man in a room with something 
unfamiliar and disquieting, Nicholas tact- 
fully filling in the rather unnatural pauses 
with gay, kindly chatter. Sir Terence’s 
voice booming away. 

Other waiters served them, deferentially 
because the head waiter had bothered about 
them. Henry had suggested dishes adroitly, 
he had indicated expensive mellow wines, 
he had mentioned “ bouquet ” as flatteringly 
as if he held one in his tail coat ready to 
produce it like a conjuror for Sir Terence. 
His work was over. He stood in dark 


PLAYING THE GAME 267 

corners of the funny little dark room and 
saw things, one felt he saw everything, he 
was in the position of the general on the knoll 
in old-fashioned war paintings who directed 
his entire army ; there was nothing modern 
about Henry or his setting. He did not 
greet everyone, he found few people tables, 
he sped only a few on their way with courte- 
ous gesture. There were some who tried to 
catch his eye, but Henry’s eye was not one 
to be caught. 

“ What a position ! ” burbled Sir Terence 
genially. “ What a position. The thing 
wants opening out, popularising. There’s 
too much space here, no one wants space 
except to fill. My class of customer thinks 
old oak means blackbeetles downstairs, and 
half the time they’re right.” 

“ Need you, Terence ? ” mourned her 
ladyship. 

“ I needn’t,” grinned the spirit of the 
Tiny Tea-Tables, Limited, “ but I like 
to.” 

Only Bim and Ann were quite normal ; 
seeing everything only through each other 
they saw nothing out of perspective. 

Poppy Whistler felt very cold, her fingers 
mechanically clutching knife and fork felt 


268 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


alarmingly dry and brittle, like twigs, but 
under the Marchesa’s eye she never quailed,, 
only the smile nailed to her face dragged 
and felt sometimes as if it must slip. 

“ We hope you will spend Sunday with us 
at Margate and meet Henry,” said she to 
Lady Terence, and Lady Terence answered 
that she would be delighted. 

“ A bungalow,” said Poppy Whistler ; 
“ small, but the garden rather nice.” 

“ How nice to have a garden ! ” 

Zuriel unthawed and began to talk. She 
took her cue from her mother, and the dis- 
appointment on the Marchesa’s wrinkled 
face goaded her on and refreshed her.. 
Zuriel did not think noblesse oblige a French 
dish. She knew the idea at the back of it, 
recognised her mother’s exposition of it and 
strove to emulate it. 

Conrad’s. 

Sir Terence said, “ I hear old Charlie 
Conrad is retiring. He’s over eighty-six, 
wonderful ! wonderful ! King Edward used 
to come here a lot. Old George Conrad 
never passed it over to Charlie till he was in 
his seventieth year. Tradition ! Tradition ! 
This place is built on ’em. Traditions keep 
you from doing the things the other fellow 


PLAYING THE GAME 


269 


are making money at. What Conrad's wants 
now is someone to blow its traditions off 
like dust and start again." 

“ A bungalow is easy to work," said Mrs. 
Whistler to her hostess. 

‘‘ It’s a pity your husband is so delicate." 

“ Why ! Henry never . . ." 

“ Does he have to go to the Riviera every 
year ? " 

“ I hear Charlie Conrad’s bought a busi- 
ness in Cannes," said Sir Terence. “ Ah ! 
they can’t keep out of it : doctor told him 
he’d have to retire and live there. They 
can’t retire, that’s the truth." 

“ It’ll break his heart to sell this. Conrad 
of Cannes . . . rolls all right." 

Then Poppy Whistler saw, Zuriel saw ! 
Henry had gone to Cannes to put Conrad’s 
house in order. . . . 

Conrad of Cannes. 

“ And when are you two getting mar- 
ried ? ’’ said Nicky. 

“ A week to-day," said Ann. 

“ You’ll let Zuriel spend the rest of the 
day with me, Mrs. Whistler ? ’’ pleaded 
Nicholas. 

Poppy Whistler hoped her lips made some 
reply ; anyway Nicholas looked pleased. 


270 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


Henry had vanished. 

They parted in the street ; they were 
cordial, charming, they halted in the little 
mahogany ante-room to say nice things to 
each other. 

Zuriel whispered to her mother, “ Would 
you like me to come back with you ? 

“ It’ll do no good.” 

“ I can’t tell Nicholas before he goes to- 
night. I can’t ! ” 

“ Who’s asking you to, my girl ? ” 

“ The best meal I’ve had for years,” purred 
Sir Timothy. 

Zuriel had a feeling of leaning mentally 
against her mother. 

“ What’ll I do ? ” 

“ Do nothing.” 

They were all pairing off like the animals in 
the ark, two by two. Poppy wanted to laugh. 
That meant nerves. She must hold on tight, 
very tight, till she got out of range of the 
Marchesa’s watchful eyes. Never, never do 
to give the old Marchesa her money’s worth. 
She remembered something vaguely about 
the middle classes. In the war someone had 
called them the backbone of the Empire, 
someone in the upper classes who had 
realised they hadn’t enough soldiers to 


PLAYING THE GAME 


271 


command . . . somehow they had to keep 
the command, they’d always been used to it. 
For the first time in her life class hatred 
fretted Poppy Whistler. She’d show that 
old Italian aristocrat a bit of backbone. 
To be middle class meant something 
more than a prehistoric belief in God, 
the editress’s personal column and clean 
curtains. 

Sir Terence and Lady Timothy climbed 
into their Daimler ; it spirited them away. 

“ We are going for a long, long ride on the 
top of a bus,” said Ann with a little catch of 
the breath. Ann could not quite believe yet. 

Poppy pulled her white-faced daughter to 
her, kissed her, patted her, smiled into her 
eyes before she sent her on her way with 
Nicholas. 

She and the Marchesa were left alone. 

“You will want to speak to your husband, 
Mrs. Whistler,” said the Marchesa very 
quietly. 

“ I think,” said Henry’s wife, “ you’ll find 
him outside by the car.” 

“ Possibly,” said the Marchesa ; “ shall 
we see ? ” 

Out on to the strip of gold pavement, 
jostled by the West End crowd gold dusted 


272 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

by the sun, a flower woman thrusting wall- 
flowers in her face. 

“ Fresh from the country, lady, fresh from 
the country.” 

“ You were right,” said the Marchesa. 

Henry standing beside Sir Terence’s second 
car. Henry out of his magpie clothes, very 
neat in a double-breasted blue serge suit, a 
bowler, a black tie. He took off his hat and 
held open the door. His face was still paper- 
white. 

“ Of course you must come home with us, 
Mr. Whistler,” said the Marchesa. 

“ I was going to ask you. Madam.” 

“ Come in. Why, of course.” 

“ I would prefer,” said Henry, and got up 
beside the chauffeur. 

“ My goodness ! ” said the Marchesa. 
“ How will it all end ? ” 

Once more the dazzle of shops leaping 
past the window like hastily unrolled ribbon 
of brilliant but chaotic design. 

“ Of course you knew^^ said Poppy. 

“ Not at first, but I intercepted that 
telegram your maid sent. I had a cousin at 
Cannes. He ... he leads rather an empty 
life. He is old too. In the old days people 
of our age were kept alive by gossip. It was 


PLAYING THE GAME 


273 


almost a profession to belong to Scandal’s 
inner circle, it was a social honour. To-day 
there is no gossip . . . there is nothing. 
You can see tucked away in the corner of a 
newspaper all that we used to gossip about. 
Nothing is artificial. We lived most keenly 
through our artificiality.” 

“ That cousin at Cannes ? ” 

“ He found out,” said the Marchesa. 
“ He found out quite a long time after you 
were in my house in town. I sent him the 
photographs of Zuriel to show your husband 
quite casually. He did.” 

She seemed old, shrunken, no longer a 
lichened and cobwebbed temple in which 
survived mysteriously and abnormally the 
laughter of youth. She was old and derelict, 
the tide of human thought and self-expres- 
sion had been turned by time and left her 
mentally high and dry seeking point of 
contact, claiming mysteries and enchantments 
and secret charms for the things which the 
present day with its passion for reality, its 
own new pet hypocrisies, had turned brutally 
to the sun, dissected and classified as the 
abnormalities of idle minds in an idle and 
self-indulgent century. 

“ I’ve grown to like you, ’’said the Marchesa. 


274 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


“ You’ve your own way of showing it,” 
said Poppy. “ God forbid you should love 
me, then ! ” 

Henry’s little round pudding of a head in 
front of her, with its thatching of soft, silky, 
silvery hair. His small ears, close set to the 
head, pointed a little like Zuriel’s. She had 
always been so proud of those ears. She 
mourned over them tenderly a moment 
before she turned to question the Marchesa 
again. 

“ Will it make much difference to the 
Timothys ? ” 

“You know it will. Snobbery has been 
her dissipation for years. You don’t give up 
your dissipation after fifty years. She’s 
suffering from a sense of inferiority.” 

“ If that’s Freud again I’d rather you didn’t 
go on. It’s like looking through a bathroom 
keyhole. Who’ll they take it out of when 
they know ? ” 

“ Zuriel,” said the Marchesa, “ and 
Nicholas. Of course it touches Nicholas. 
He has ambitions. He’s marrying the daugh- 
ter of a head waiter and he’s taking her into 
his career.” 

“ Or the daughter of a retired civil servant. 
Don’t forget that.” 


PLAYING THE GAME 


275 


“ That is for your husband to decide.” 

“ You’ve said it,” agreed Mrs. Whistler. 

The Marchesa put her brown hand, with 
all the veins showing like the structure of a 
dried leaf, on Poppy Whistler’s arm. 

“ I can only live through other people’s 
vanities and weaknesses,” said the Marchesa 
gently. “ They were my greatest indulgence 
all my life and when one nears the end only 
memories of and desires for old indulgences 
are left. One may say I staged this comedy. 
Zuriel intrigued me, her beauty and her 
history. I perceived her chances, and so I 
lent you the house ; the rest unfolded.” 

“ And is still unfolding.” 

“ Of course you’ll go back to Margate 
with your husband. Zuriel can spend the 
night with me after she has seen Nicholas 
Timothy off.” 

“ I don’t know that’ll he want me,” said 
Henry’s wife. “ That would amuse you.” 

“ I don’t know that I am amused.” 

“ It seems a pity somebody shouldn’t get 
something out of it,” commented Poppy 
Whistler bitterly. 

They were riding through the Park now ; 
the green was cool to her eyes, cool to her 
mind. It seemed to flow round Henry’s 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


276 

ears. Henry’s ears were the centre of her 
universe. She must hold on. She was 
getting nervy. . . . 

The car drew up outside the Marchesa’s 
house. 

Henry helped the ladies out. 

The car rolled away. 

They stood on the doorstep waiting for 
Josephine to open the door. 

“ Your wife did it for the best, Mr. 
Whistler, I assure you,” fumbled the Mar- 
chesa. 

Henry bowed, and she received the im- 
pression of having impulsively given very 
small alms to quite the wrong person. 


XXV 


YOUTH AND AGE 

T hey were alone. 

The Marchesa had vanished, tak- 
ing Josephine with her, Josephine 
who smelt them with her Latin imagination 
as if she were famished and they a savoury 
casserole whose contents she yearned to 
turn over. 

Henry sat down. 

“ I can hardly believe . . . anything,” he 
said. 

Mrs . Whistler took off her hat . She seemed 
to take off her mind with it. She seemed to 
hunt for her mind and her handkerchief at 
the same time and find them simultaneously. 
She applied them at the same time. The 
one to Henry and the other to the beads 
of perspiration that bedewed her upper 
lip. 

“ Oh, Henry ! ” she said. ‘‘ My dear, you 
have gone thin ! ” 

277 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


278 

She slipped off her patent shoes, rounding 
her lips in an expression of agony. 

“ There,’’ she said. “ Now I’ll tell you 
everything right from the beginning . . * 
starting from the shelter. Oh ! Henry dear, 
wouldn’t you like a nice hot cup of tea ? ” 
don’t want anything. Poppy,” said the 
long-suffering Henry, “ except to know what 
it is all about and what you are doing here.” 

The sun shifted and Poppy had only got 
as far as Nicholas Timothy’s first call. 
Before she had found the wonderful dress 
that was never worn it had slipped out of 
the room. While she sketched Lady Timothy 
for her silent husband, it vanished. She 
expounded Zuriel’s point of view in the cool 
grey of early twilight. 

Henry stirred himself, cramped in mind 
andlbody. 

“ Terence Timothy’s son,” he said. “ Oh, 
God|!|” 

His wife crept over to him and put a hot 
hand in his. 

“ I’ve got used to it,” she said. “ You get 
used to it.” 

Something warm and wet fell on her hand 
infthe twilight. She knew it was a tear, and 
Henry’s. She sat still and tried to brush it 


YOUTH AND AGE 


279 


out of her consciousness, because she knew 
Henry would not wish it to be there. That 
tear made her agonisingly shy and awkward, 
because all the time she had known Henry 
she had never, never seen him without his 
equipment of masculine convention. Men 
did not cry. Men were brusque in the face 
of emotion, brave in the face of danger. 
Tears were women’s affairs ; she felt as if 
she had caught Henry in mental undress. 
She wanted, not so much to apologise, 
as to get away before she realised she was 
there. 

“ Are you sure you would not like a nice 
hot cup of tea, dear ? ” 

“ Sure.” 

He rose and paced the room. She drew a 
breath of intense relief. Men might pace 
the room, that was true to masculine conven- 
tion. Men did it in books. Henry was like 
the men in books. 

“ All . . . my . . . life . . .” he said, 
“ I’ve . . . been . . . saving . . . to . . . buy 
Conrad’s. Conrad’s is for sale. Old Charlie 
is selling it to Sir Terence or me. Perhaps 
Sir Terence isn’t telling people yet. He’s 
negotiating for it, and so am 1.” 

“ My Lord ! ” moaned his wife. 


28 o 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


She sat still trying to make a road through 
a thunderbolt. 

“ Oh ! you don’t understand ! ” 

“I’m trying to, Henry ! Oh, Henry, I’m 
trying to.” 

Now he was demanding of her something 
that men demanded of women in books. 
Something she’d never understood, some- 
thing she wondered at . . . soul stuff. She 
didn’t really think there was soul stuff 
between men and women, only between men 
and God, or much more often, and it seemed 
to her more naturally, between women and 
God . . . but something in her was shining, 
shining towards Henry . . . soul stuff that 
had been there all the time. 

“ Tell me,” she said. 

He told her, quite simply, pacing the 
room ; when he stopped she knew it was 
because tears prevented his going on. His 
masculinity, her femininity, became blurred 
for the first time, and because they were 
blurred they merged. She had always tried 
to understand her husband as a man. He 
wasn’t so very different from herself. He 
was easy to understand. In between his 
words wove her soft wonderment that she 
could understand. 


YOUTH AND AGE 281 

“ There’s been God in my life,” he said. 
“ And you and Zuriel ... all high up, just 
like that. I never told you what I was. You 
were so fine, so big in my life ; you were 
Henry Whistler’s belongings, not a head 
waiter’s wife and daughter. God wasn’t a 
waiter’s God, he was Henry Whistler’s God 
... it was the same idea. God and you 
were refined. I kept you for my private life. 
I hadn’t the proper accommodation for you 
in the other. I wanted to be a gentleman to 
my God and my wife and my child. Do you 
understand ? ” 

“ As if it would have made any difference!” 

“ It would. It has,” said Henry Whistler. 
“ Not as much to you, but it has to Zuriel. 
I saw it in her face to-day.” 

“ That’s because of Nicholas and those 
snobby Timothys.” 

“ It is always because of someone.” He 
paused. “ Ever since I went there years 
ago I’ve dreamed . . . I’ve longed . . . I’ve 
waited for the day when old Conrad should 
fail and I would come to you and say, ‘ I own 
Conrad’s. I own Conrad’s I ’ Every man 
has an ideal in his life and personal service 
lies at the back of it. I wanted to be in the 
service of the public, to serve the best with 


282 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


the best. I thought of Conrad’s as something 
to bring you and Zuriel, the best thing I 
could bring ... I never thought you and 
Zuriel mightn’t want it if I brought it. I 
never thought.” 

“ It’s because you lived with me, not by 
yourself,” said his wife. “ That’s what’s 
been wrong, Henry dear.” 

‘‘ I wanted it for myself,” said Henry 
slowly. “ To make a hero of myself for you. 
Conrad’s has become a tradition with me. 
It still seems to me wonderful and beautiful 
in these days of adulteration, of faked food- 
stuffs, or rubbish prettily served in dainty 
surroundings, to serve the very, very best, 
to make your name on that and stand by 
it, to uphold a promise your name stands for. 
I seem incorporated with Conrad’s. The 
old man ... he knew, he used to talk to me. 
He built Conrad’s in me ... he made it 
part of me. He knew you didn’t know. He 
made me see Conrad’s as a prize to gain. 
They’ve a book ... all the wonderful 
receipts in it . . . larks’ tongues and rare 
wines ... he made that into a poem for 
me. In a book they’ve the names of some of 
the people who used to go there ... in his 
father’s time and his grandfather’s time. 


YOUTH AND AGE 


283 

Disraeli, princes . . . poets ... I felt as 
if I were carrying a banner . . . carrying it 
for people like that, a crusader against cor- 
ruption and adulteration. I stood for the 
good old times, sometimes I think I even 
thought I could bring them back if I was 
true to Conrad ideals. I believe in pure 
food as people’s right. I ... I can’t tell 
you how I believe in it. It was built up in 
me by old Conrad. I am proud of Conrad’s 
and what it stood for . . . and Conrad’s 
was going to accept me.” 

“ The Timothys,” said his wife, “ would 
have broken their hearts if Nicholas was to 
marry the owner of Conrad’s ... let alone 
the head waiter. There’s no getting away 
from it, is there ? I mean if you had 
bought Conrad’s I wouldn’t have minded 
personally.” 

“ Minded ! ” 

“ Well, dear, we’ve only just heard of 
Conrad’s as you might say. It’s been your 
life, but it hasn’t been ours.” 

“ But Conrad’s ! ” He flung his hands in 
the air with a funny little gesture. “ Conrad’s 
is the crown I’ve been saving up all my life 
to buy for you.” 

“ It wouldn’t fit,” said Poppy ; “ crowns 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


284 

you’ve never heard of canH fit . . . you 
haven’t grown for them. . . She was 
very quiet, her hands had ceased to flutter. 
“We’ve had sixty years of life. Sixty years 
is a long time.” 

“ But to reach the top.” 

“ And then get pushed down so that some- 
one younger may go on. It’s always happen- 
ing, Henry dear. The world isn’t for elderly 
people at all, but they’re not strong enough 
to own it. We’ve had sixty years and Zuriel 
has sixty years to go . . . perhaps every- 
thing you’ve done has been to push her to 
where she stands now. I can’t see God as a 
kind old personal friend like you do, Henry ; 
I wish I could. To me he’s something with 
funny ways. I feel that all this may be just 
funny ways.” 

“ But you don’t understand. If Sir 
Terence takes Conrad’s he’ll . . . he’ll dese- 
crate it. Old Charlie is too old ... he 
doesn’t really care, he’s got the place at 
Cannes I’ve been fixing up for him to play 
with. I’m not a civil servant. Why should 
I be something to please Zuriel ? Why 
should I give up ? ” 

“ It’s life that’s giving you up,” said his 
wife. “ Life’s done with you and me, but 


YOUTH AND AGE 285 

it hasn’t done with Zuriel. Why should we 
send her into the new life with an apology. 
She’s going abroad . . . she’s going out of 
our lives. Our children aren’t given to us, 
they’re only lent. Nicholas says that. No- 
thing is given to us in life, it’s only lent.” 

‘‘ Zuriel’ll have to tell this young man.” 

“ Zuriel won’t. He doesn’t have to know. 
It wouldn’t make him any happier. Zuriel 
won’t. I know Zuriel.” 

“ There isn’t anything beautiful to you in 
pure food beautifully cooked ? ” 

“ Oh, Henry ! ” protested his wife piti- 
fully, ‘‘ what’s the good of walking round 
and round it ? I’ve asked Sir Timothy and 
his wife down to lunch at the bungalow next 
Sunday.” 

“ Is the young man a snob ? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” said Mrs. Whistler, “ but he 
doesn’t know it.” 

“All my life I’ve wanted Conrad’s. We 
could have spent more, had a bigger home 
. . . but I saved for Conrad’s.” 

“ Nicholas is going away for six months 
to-night,” said Mrs. Whistler. “ If he knew 
who Zuriel’s father was ... I hesitate to 
say it because I don’t know . . . but I think 
. . . Have you the right to slam the door on 


286 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


her future, which may last a long time, to 
carry on your future for the little while that 
is left to you ? ” 

“ But to own Conrad’s ! ” 

“ It depends how you look at Conrad’s.” 

“ But to know that I could have had it . . . 
and that it is going into old Timothy’s 
money-making hands.” 

“ It will only be one of Sir Terence’s 
interests . . . there’s the difference. Sir 
Terence is a merchant prince. I saw him 
described as that in the paper. His business 
is an organisation. You didn’t want us to 
know you were head waiter.” 

“ No. No ... I know. You mean what 
I felt they’ll feel ? ” 

‘‘ If you buy Conrad’s it will be bound to 
come out ... it may even come out if£Sir 
Terence buys it.” 

“ I worked there under the name of 
Squires.” 

“ Ah ! then you see ! ” 

“ I shan’t see Sir Terence ... no one’ll 
know, it isn’t that. Oh, Poppy ! it’s a blow 
. . . it’s a blow ! ” 

“ You like paddling about,” said Mrs. 
Whistler. “ You always liked paddling about, 
dear, the garden and then down the town. 


YOUTH AND AGE 


287 

We could know people. IVe always wanted 
to know a few people ... a little game of 
Bridge . . . homely things . . . you like 
bulb catalogues . . . and ZurieEs letters 
. . . and I could knit all their little woollies 
if they came. IVe never had evenings with 
you. It 11 be just like being newly married.*’ 

“ It’s awful to give it up.” 

She said, ‘‘ It isn’t as if I’ve things to give, 
dear, things that would make it up, high 
spirits, kisses, all that sort of thing, but I 
could share . . . that’s the big hunger in 
old age . . . someone to share the slowing 
up . . . the little things that don’t seem 
important to anyone else. I’m a sharing 
kind of person, Henry dear. We’d share 
this sacrifice. Little plans ... it doesn’t 
matter so’s you can go on planning . . .it’s 
the planning that matters. I’m very near to 
you, Henry.” 

“ My dear,” he said, shaken. “ My dear 
wife.” 

“ I mean, Henry, it’s been hard . . . you 
were so correct. I’m a cossety kind of 
woman, tucking up and fussing. Sometimes 
I’ve felt so lonely, dear. I’ve longed for you 
to have a bad cold . . . and then you never 
needed brushing and you ironed your own 


288 


THE CUCKOO’S NEST 


ties. It’s difficult to get near men like 
you. Crying now . . . Henry, dear . . . you 
don’t mind my mentioning your crying . . . 
but if I’d known you could do it it would 
have altered all my married life. I’ve 
respected you all these years,” said Poppy 
Whistler. “ Oh ! Henry dear, it would have 
been so much easier if I hadn’t.” 

It was quite dark in the Marchesa’s lounge. 

Poppy roused herself. 

“ There’s that poor old lady shut up there 
with no tea. Henry dear, couldn’t you 
manage a cup too ? It’s china . . . the 
best.” 

The telephone rang. 

Poppy Whistler went to it. Her husband 
heard her voice. ' 

‘‘ Come home ! Certainly not, child ! 
I’ve got your father. Hullo ! is that you, 
Nicky ? Yes, he had a lovely holiday and 
looks ever so fit. She’s a silly child, make the 
most of the short time you’ve got together. 
You’d like us to ? What ! both of us ? But 
your own people will be there. Wouldn’t it 
be better . . . Oh ! very well ... Yes, 
certainly, if you wish it.” 

“ Nicholas wants us both to go and see him 
off. Oh, Henry ! did they look at you ? ” 


YOUTH AND AGE 289 

‘‘ Not as a person, only as a waiter. I look 
so different in these clothes.” 

He crossed the room to her. 

“ Oh, Henry, Henry ! You will ! You 
will ! ” 

“ It’s all right, my dear. There 1 it’s all 
right. I’ve been thinking . . . thinking.” 


u 


XXVI 


HENRY SEES IT THROUGH 


S unshine. 

In the garden the ruby of blood- 
red wallflower, the amber of the 
dwarf antirrhinum, the lapis lazuli of the 
delphinium, the amethyst of the viola, the 
turquoise of the forget-me-not, shifting, 
shifting under the sun like a tray of jewels 
under a jeweller's lamp. 

“ Wonderful wine, Whistler.” 

“ I fancy myself a little as a judge of wines. 
Sir Timothy.” 

Lizzie coming and going in a new cap and 
apron, a little too noisily, breathing a little 
too heavily. Good old Lizzie dreaming of 
weddings, while she handed Lady Terence 
the sauce tartare. 

“You have a charming home, child.” 
Zuriel in white, smiling back at her future 
mother-in-law. 

A sea breeze coming through the open 

290 


HENRY SEES IT THROUGH 291 

window, brushing the heads of the flowers on 
the table, ruffling ZurieEs pale hair. 

“ So Mr. Redgold is married,’’ said Lady 
Timothy. “ I don’t care for artists much, 
you have to be so careful who you sit them 
next to at dinner. They say such very up- 
setting things sometimes. I liked her hat 
that day at Conrad’s. Wonderful sauce, Mrs. 
Whistler. You must have a good cook.” 

“ Oh, I’ve only one girl.” 

Henry had made the sauce. Lizzie knew. 
Lizzie was goggling. 

Sir Timothy said, “ I’ve a bit of news for 
you, a bit of news. I’d never been inside 
Conrad’s till that day . . . now I’ve bought 
it. It’s mine. Took a fancy to it that day 
and went after it.” 

Only Lizzie did not know he was lying. 

“ I sold the panelling to an American. 
It’ll be one of the Tiny Tea-Tables, Limited ; 
they don’t want a past, they want a future. 
I’m having pink lights put in everywhere.” 

‘‘ Were you sorry to leave the Civil Service, 
Mr. Whistler ? ” interrupted Lady Timothy 
firmly. 

Sir Terence burbled on. 

“ White paint, pink satin panels ... a 
jazz band.” 


292 THE CUCKOO’S NEST 

Henry was standing by the sideboard. 
He had been standing there for hours surely. 
He was milky white. 

‘‘ Nothing like pink for making the middle 
classes feel abandoned. Fve sacked most of 
the staff. Gave ’em six months’ money. I 
don’t want my name bandied about among the 
unemployed. I’ll have girls . . . girls in 
pink.” 

“ Henry,” said Mrs. Whistler, “ Lady 
Timothy wants some wine.” 

Henry said : 

‘‘ Certainly, Madame, certainly.” 


Printed in Great Britain at 

The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. 


















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